Victoria Alone
by phfina
Summary: Sigh. The Happy Ending. EVERYbody loves a happy ending. Of course, my happy ending would've been Bella Swan's heart ripped from her chest in my hand, but ... Time and Tide wait on no one. Not even me. So I must settle for this ending: happy though it be.
1. Alone

_Labor Day Weekend, 2006, the Fishlake National Forest, Utah, U.S.A._

Pre-dawn.

I walk on the cold ground of the forest floor.

But my feet do not feel the cold.

I walk, and the air is ... almost still. The sound of the cicadas in the early morning. No sound of cars so prevalent in 'civilised' societies, because I'm away from civilisation.

Well, most of it. It's in my nature to be on the outskirts; from the outside, looking in. Alone, but never alone.

No man is an island.

No woman is, either. I am not a man. James made me a woman, but now he is gone. And I feel that ache down to my empty bones that are now stone, the ache of the emptiness.

James is gone.

And the ache, this emptiness, is a hurt, a constant hurt, sometimes sharp and sudden, like a sucker punch to the stomach, and sometimes gnawing and wet, like the feeling in your stomach after.

It.

Hurts.

And it doesn't go away.

It's like the hunger, gnawing away at my reason. Two months I haven't fed. Two months of running, and running and running in terror.

Seven vampires.

Seven _fucking_ vampires in a coven closed in on James, and they annihilated him.

Two vampires. No problem. Three vampires, we could handle.

Seven.

They wiped him out, all because of that little morsel they brought along they didn't want to share, and why?

Laurent was gone. Wisely. Us against seven? Suicide. James ...

James was gone, because once he wanted something, he didn't stop until he got it, and this time he just went too far, thinking he could have his cake and eat it, too.

Normally he could. But against a coven of seven vampires?

Here's what you do when you see seven vampires ... _which is never! _... in a group. You nod to them. They nod to you, and you keep yourself polite, and you put fucking distance between you and them.

But not James. He could push little me around. He could push Laurent around. We could take on, then take out, another coven of a mated pair, and quickly, too. But a coven of _seven_ vampires?

And now he's gone. And Laurent's gone, and now ...

I'm all alone.

I'm all alone after three centuries. All alone. James is gone, and I don't know what to do. The emptiness inside me needs to be filled. I'm not a vacuum, and it's filled with hurt and hate and rage and blood lust, but no matter how I indulge this emptiness, there's always more of it to fill.

James is gone.

I can't think around this. I can't function. I can't feed and be sated, for all I feel is this emptiness. I _cannot_ be near people, for I am different. But I _cannot_ be alone, because the thought seeps and creeps into my mind, into my very being.

James is gone.

And I ... just ... can't ... _breathe!_ ... with that thought filling my mind with pitch and gripping my chest like a vise.

And I'm hungry.

I'm o-so-so-_hungry._

Again.

I hate this. I hate this hunger. Not the pain in my throat nor the pulling in my stomach, no. I hate the monotony of it. You feed, you're sated, you run, you wait, you're hungry. Over and over and over again. It was the only thing that gave a direction of time in this eternity, and I hated it. Why couldn't it leave me alone? But no. I hungered, I needed to eat. James was gone. I wanted to mourn; I wanted to wail; I wanted to sit in the forest forever and stare at my hands and lament his lost.

But no. I was hungry. I needed to eat. I _had_ to eat. So my feet moved me, and my nose quested until I found it.

I looked out over the campsite.

_Perfect._

My lips curled up into a rictus of a feral smile.

Six pup tents.

_People,_ I thought disparagingly. Always having to 'get away from it all,' but what is the first thing they do? They collect themselves into a group.

_Cows._ Like cows people herded themselves, knowing instinctively that the group was stronger than the individual. One fell, the others helped, or, if they couldn't, at least the others continued where the one did not.

Humanity was a joke. An idiot joke played out over the centuries, constantly try to live, to extend themselves, and to what end?

There was only one end to life: death. And the joke was people lived their lives pretending they had some purpose, some meaning, or some legacy to leave.

There was no legacy for them to leave. The only thing that left, after a half century or so, was they.

Only I remained.

So, then, it seemed to me, their only purpose ... was to feed me.

This group of people: some of them would find their purpose.

Now.

My feet moved me to this campsite. They did not move. They slept. I moved.

There was a tent. A young couple. Maybe just out of college, just starting their careers or whatever pointless things people did. Heathy. Heath _nuts._ Strong. Virile. Full of blood.

_Perfect,_ I thought again, and my lips turned up into a sweet, little smile. Soon, my hunger would be sated, and none would be the wiser but me. Two people so full of promise, their whole lives ahead of them, died suddenly on a camping trip while discovering the great outdoors. Too bad. So sad. Turn the page of your newspaper to read the next story.

Because this story, for this young couple, was over.

The woman stirred.

"Alan," she said groggily, "did you hear something?"

Her lover, Alan, did not stir.

Her lover. They were entwined, and the smell of sex was heavy in this tent.

The girl raised herself up on her elbows and started fumbling for an electric torch as she kicked at her lover.

"Alan!" she said. "I think I heard something!"

"Uh," he said.

And she illumed her torch.

But I was gone by then.

The perfect couple.

The 'guy,' he was nothing to me: curly black hair on top and a trimmed beard and moustache, brown eyes. Nothing like my James nor that cursed Edward Cullen.

But the girl ...

Brown hair, brown eyes. Pale. Diminutive.

_Bella Swan._

She had the look and the comportment of that little snack the Cullens had brought along and then had so systematically protected and defended.

Down to roots of her thick hair, down to her fingernails, down to the pitch and timbre of her voice, down to her emaciated figure and pert breasts.

I had breathed the air Bella Swan had breathed. I had been in her house. I had been through her records at her school in the stupid, nowhere town of Forks, Washington.

This guy was neither Edward Cullen nor James that was entwined in this girls arms and legs.

But the girl ...

I was going to eat them up, yum-yum, no problems. Their scent didn't give away anything other than: _'I am food. Eat me.'_ Not like the heady perfume that was Bella Swan. But when the girl spoke and slouched herself up from her lover's arms.

I froze.

Here was the spitting image of the girl that had destroyed my very reason for existence, right fucking in front of me, and ...

I didn't know what to do.

Oh. I knew what I would do with Bella Swan. I would kill her. Slowly. So slowly that she would beg me for death, and I would record ... what do they call it now? 'film'? as in 'slime'? or 'video' as in 'seeing'? ... yes, I would 'video' every second of it. I would make her beg, and curse her Edward, and make her wish him and herself every ill, and beg me to kill her.

Then I would kill her. I would gut her, right where the broken remains of her body was standing, because I'd be holding her up, then I would send that video to Edward Cullen and his friends, and let them know how it felt to lose was was most precious to you. I'd let them feel every agonizing second of it.

As I did.

That's what I'd do to her.

But this ... person was no Bella Swan, and her lover was no James who ...

Okay. Red. I see red.

James who held _her_ in his arms, his precious prize. _Not ME! _

_IN HIS LAST SECONDS OF EXISTENCE HE HELD BELLA SWAN, NOT ME!_

It was not James in this girl's arms. It was not sullen, spoilt-boy Edward Cullen. It, ... he ... was a nobody and nothing to me.

But to her, he was something.

I wonder.

I wonder what would hurt that Bella Swan-girl, as she hurt me ...

Wait.

As she hurt me.

Wait. I grasped at that thought. The first thought since James was gone that had meaning to me.

As she hurt me.

Suddenly, I knew what to do.

This girl was a gift.

This girl was practice.

I would practice on her, and take away everything that meant anything to her, and I would make despair so thick and rich and syrupy to her that it would be her very food and drink.

And I would feed it to her, bite by agonising bite, so after a full meal of it, it would make her beg for death, beg for the sweet release of death, beg me for it so that she wanted that succor more than she wanted anything else in this world.

And then ...

My lips curled up in a tight, little, wicked smile, but I wasn't about to feed. Oh, no.

When she begged for death, would I gift that to her, just like that? Just because she asked me so very nicely, so very desperately?

Maybe.

But she'd have to ask me _very_ nicely. So much so that I _wanted _to give it to her.

I think she'd need lots and lots of practice to be able to ask me rightly.

_Lots_ of practice.

As I watched and waited, the Sun broke over the horizon, and the forest started to fill with the sounds of life. The birds twittered. The animals woke from their slumbers.

I, a stone, sat, and thought, and planned.

Then my feet moved me again over the cold forest floor.

But my feet did not feel the cold.

* * *

**A/N:** Hi. Happy Labor Day to my U.S.A. friends.

This story is not-at-all Mary Sue. I'm not Victoria. She is not me... I. She is not I.

I'm alone, but I don't have any plans to go and ... whatever me a Bella Swan.

And I hate the cold-damp.


	2. Jogging

**WARNING: ** Graphic depiction of a vampire doing her thang. Not for the squeamish. You have been warned, dear reader.

* * *

Alan and her lover roused themselves early, before the other campers awakened, stretched and then trotted off into the forest. 'Jogging.'

People 'jog' in this century. Apparently it's good for the health and good for the fitness.

Jogging certainly gets the blood flowing.

Good for me.

After the two were some distance, I descended on the camp ground, like an avenging angel, sent by God, and I set to work.

Men, women, and two children.

Twelve of them.

I ripped out their throats, fed, just a little bit, I didn't gorge myself, because I had to save myself for a very special treat, then I took the bodies, one by one, stripped them, then ripping branches from (not so) obliging trees, I skewered each and every one of them, standing them in the central clearing, the branches posted solidly into the earth, but their feet swaying a good yard above the ground.

Do you know in my day they used to spike the heads of heretics and traitors on the castle walls as a warning to us all? You cross your liege-lord, this is your fate. You rob, you murder, this is what happened to you.

You hunt a stag to feed your family, and word got out? Kiss your head goodbye. How dare you feed your starving family with the Earl's property?

Rape was okay, however. 'Rape' didn't exist, actually. A woman was either a harlot or an adulterer and deserved what was coming to her. The men?

Well, boys will be boys, won't they?

But do you know why they only spiked the heads of criminals?

Because you lift a body. Six men to carry a coffin. It takes a very strong man to lift a man.

I didn't have that problem. I could have beheaded them, but, I figured that they felt they wanted to be together. Safer that way. Safety in the herd.

I hate herds. I hate people. I hate everything.

The only thing left in my being was hate. It consumed me.

So I took a little, tiny bit of my hate out on these idiots. "Oh, let's go out camping!" "Yes, let's!"

Because why? Because they wanted to experience nature in all its beauty? On a man-made campground? And leave their litter about for some official to clean up after so that the grounds were ready for the next herd of people to wander in for a weekend getaway?

'Getaway'!

Let's see them get away from me. Let's see them get away from Death now.

Posted to the ground, literally left out to drain and dry, they didn't and couldn't get away from anything now. Their story ended.

I envied them, slightly. They didn't have to go on and on and on anymore. I killed them in their sleep, too. I would've had fun torturing a few and watching the rest try helplessly to flee. I would've had fun chasing them down. They hide. I seek. I find. They scream. I kill.

Fun game.

But I had a different game in mind, and it wasn't a committee game. I didn't need bystanders, waiting their turns. I needed just me and my intended.

So I made quick work of the rest.

It was a pretty picture I painted, mostly in overtones of red. The looks of shock and agony on my victims' faces helped with the theme of it all, which was important to me in an abstract way.

After hundreds of years, one attains discernment of what she likes and what she doesn't.

I liked this picture I painted. Twelve stakes. Twelve dead people, men, women, and children, bleeding out, now slowed. Horror and terror and agony writ large across their faces.

It was a redress. Why did they get to live when their lives were pointless? Why was I eternally dead when I knew better than any of them what the value of a life actually was.

The value of a life is nothing. Absolutely nothing. A person lives, a person dies, and there were millions, nay, now billions, to replace them.

These people had no right to their stupid, meaningless lives.

Nobody did.

So I took their lives from them, that which they didn't deserve, and I gave them what they did deserve: nothing.

The bonfire would be exquisite, I now had enough venom in me to make the flames touch the sky and maybe even scorch the Moon. But that would come later.

Huffing and puffing, winded from their exercise, stomping through the forest in their running shoes loudly enough to alarm every creature in nearly a half-mile radius, these two humans were impossible to miss.

I left a sign-post that was also impossible to miss.

I fell to the blood-muddied ground in a heap, arm stretched out in supplication, eyes wide and vacant and terror-filled: a poor waif caught up in the squalor of death.

The blood smelled intoxicatingly delicious, even awash in urine and vomit and fecal matter. I resisted the urge to suck in the mud as I lay face-down in it.

"Help me," I whispered, helplessly, into the mud.

I had to work hard at draining my voice of glee, but you had to appreciate the beauty of it. Look at me, poor, little me! Come rescue me from this horror!

People are such good samaritans. Moved with compassion, they would pull me out of the muck, rescuing me, and in so doing, would be pulled into the abyss I had prepared for them.

You don't help the less fortunate; you, the less fortunate, help yourselves on the privileged few too stupid to run from us.

That's what help is: help yourselves.

But people don't know this. They learn it, but then in a new century or in a new country, they forget that lesson and have it visited on them all over again.

There was a reason why the priest and the levite, that is: the 'lawyer' for you too far into this century to know that, cross onto the other side of the road when they saw the robbed and beaten man. They were smart.

This young couple.

Would they be smart?

That was half the fun of the hunt. The kill, yes, and always, but ... hundreds of years pass and kill after kill after kill blur into a boring sameness.

Its the cleverness of the prey that excites you after a while. Or their stupidity.

Some are so stupid as to walk right into your arms, to walk right into the trap, their eyes wide open with wonder and innocence.

Killing those stupid ones was sometimes so funny that it was a treat to do it.

_"Bang, you're dead, you idiot!" _I'd squeal as I killed them, seeing the realization dawn in their dying eyes as I ripped out their throats.

The realization that they had just done this to themselves.

Or would they be smart, and run?

_Ooh!_ I _loved_ it when they ran.

You get to play with the ones that run. You get to see the hope fill their eyes as you let them _almost_ get away, but then pull them back, inch by inch, from the illusory refuge and watch as the desperation mounts in them, and they fight to free themselves from your grip so that they can just get away! But to where? And to run, to flee, but from me? How? Not one of these twelve that I have just killed had a second's chance, but you think you'll fare better? Why? Does God owe you one?

Because that's what it would take, a miracle, once a vampire sets her sights on you. And I probably prayed for that miracle harder than my prey did.

I'd like that kind of challenge: overcoming a miraculous escape. It'd make the chase so much more fun!

What would these two do?

I was _dying_ to find out.

"Help me!" I whimpered in my little girl's voice.

They were too far to hear. They were too far to see the carnage yet, but it helped me to get into the spirit of the thing, poor, bedraggled me, just another victim, just like everybody else, only more so.

Only not at all.

"Help me, ..." I breathed, wheezing in in air in ragged gasps, my body twitching slightly, my hand clawing at the muddied dirt.

"Help..." I gasped.

_"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Alaaaaan!"_ The girl had run right into this tableau, full tilt, probably racing her lover to the finish line, pleased as punch that she could beat him. Maybe she could. Maybe he let her, pleased to let her win now, so he would win her later as she crowed over this victory.

But the finish line was a different place than what she expected to see.

"Oh, God!" The man cried, bursting onto the scene himself now. "Oh, my God! Oh..."

The girl was crying. "Alan! Oh, my God! Th-these people, oh! Ala..."

"H-help me," I cried softly, weakly, but just loud enough to be heard along with their anguish.

They stopped. They froze.

I twitched, just a tiny, little bit: lifeless, helpless, harmless. No sudden, forceful movements to make them jump back, just a little quiver.

To draw them in.

"Oh, my God, Alan!" The girl whispered. "Th-that girl... she's ... Alan!"

There was a stony silence.

After a pause, the girl spoke again. "Alan," the girl said with more force in her voice. "That girl is still alive. Alan, that girl ..."

Her voice carried just a touch of righteous anger. It carried just a touch of blame.

Just a touch of it.

That touch. A woman knows how to say with her tone what you should do and how you should be, if you were a man at all, and at that, a man worthy of her.

She knew that touch, and she used it now.

_Thank you,_ I whispered into my heart gratefully, _thank you for demanding your man to do the right thing._

Her little push with the tone of her voice made it all so easy for me.

Alan _tsk_ed. "Yes, okay, I know, all right, Summer? God!"

_Summer._ I thought disparagingly. I wonder if she changes her name with the seasons. Or if she becomes a cold bitch in Winter, perhaps, hm?

I kept my thoughts to myself and out of my voice. "Puh-please," I whispered into the muck, "help me!" And I clawed fitfully at the dirt, trying what? to pull myself up out of the muck, like every, stupid, living, breathing person did? And what good did it do them?

They were all worm-food. They were all but dust, and to dust they _all_ returned. And all the clawing in the world helped not one of them.

Alan approached me cautiously, and I allowed myself a small smile. He couldn't see it: my face was in the mud-blood. I was covered in it. It looked like I was bleeding copiously. Perhaps my stomach had been slashed open? Who knew? Could I be saved?

It all depended on them, didn't it?

"Summer," Alan called back, looking down toward me, "get the first aid kit."

"Oh!" the girl said.

I couldn't think of her as 'Summer,' for some reason.

She sprung to life and ran, gazelle-like toward their tent.

Alan crouched down by my head. "Hey," he said gently, caring and concern filled his voice. "Hey, are you okay?"

I laughed-cried-wailed into the dirt.

For the truth of the matter was ... I wasn't okay. Obviously the role I had assumed, this person was not even near the map of being ... 'okay' ... whatsoever that word meant, and I had no grasp of it, but I think nobody else did either, just saying the word they had heard over and over again, and not even knowing it was a meaningless slogan word from some pointless political campaign.

They said 'okay' these days like they said 'hullo!' not even knowing that their greeting-word was not a greeting-word at all, but there it was. "Hullo!" "Hullo!" everybody said to each other in their atrocious American-accented voices, sullying the King's English like they sullied this forest.

A blight upon the world, humanity was, with their 'okay's and their 'hullo's.

But the girl I was pretending to be was so very not okay, and it was an insult even to suggest that. But the girl who I was, lost, alone, hunted, afraid ... so, so very alone.

I was not okay. And it hurt that this man thought he could make me okay by offering it, his voice filled with solicitous concern.

Like his sincerity would bring me my James back?

Nothing could bring James back, and nothing would make that 'okay.' Any such offering, in fact, only made it worse.

So much worse.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice repentant, realizing his mistake. "Hey," he said, "hey, let's get you out of this, okay?"

"H-help me," I burbled.

"Yes," he said. "Let me take your hand, okay? Lemme help you. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay?"

"Nnnah!" I whined and clawed at the earth.

"Yeah," he said encouragingly. "Lemme just ..." He pulled at my hand. "Oh, my God!" he said. "Summer!" he called.

"What?" the girl called, running toward us.

_Hm. _I thought. Not perfect, the set up, but it would have to do. I wanted her some distance, from us when I killed him, so she could take in every detail as his life flowed out of him into me.

That would have been perfect.

But you work with what you have provided to you.

"She's gone into shock! I think she's lost a lot of blood!" He said, more commandingly: the man taking charge of the situation, just as the man should. "Quick! Help me get her out of this shit so we can get her to a hospital."

"Help me," I whimpered, my fingers twitching as he pulled at my arm with half his strength, wanting to pull me out of the muck, but not wanting to pull my arm out of my socket.

How very ... sweet of him.

"We're trying, okay?" he said with effort. "We're trying. Just ..."

I kicked a little into the muck, my action unseen by my rescuer, but which propelled me a few inches forward.

Our manly man grunted a _"Whoa!" _and fell back into the dirt hard.

_Now._ I thought.

I lifted my head from the muck, and let him, my rescuer, my prey, see my red, red, blood red eyes.

"Help

me

fill

the

emptiness

inside,"

I sung to him in a whispered hiss,

and, my legs coiled under me, I sprung forward, right on top of him.

"Holy ...!" was all he could say before my teeth found his neck.

The girl, nearly right beside us, uttered a shocked "What the ...?" in surprise.

It was nothing to the sound of the man's scream when the venom hit his blood stream, and spread, and spread, and spread, right into and through his nervous system, like wildfire.

He screamed.

He screamed like a little girl. He screamed like a newborn babe.

And as he screamed, every one of his muscles tensed, tensed to their breaking points, and in tensing ... pushed the blood.

Right into my hungry mouth.

And I fed as he screamed.

The girl found her senses, fast. She didn't stand there, agape, a helpless Lucretia. She fell on us, trying to shove me off him, trying to pull me away.

I am stone. I am immovable.

I am not shoved.

I am not pried.

"Aaah!" the man screamed. "Aah! My God! Get 'er off me! Get 'er off me! Help me, Summer!"

And I fed.

"Fuck!" the girl screamed. "Get off him, you bitch!"

And I fed.

"God damn it!" the girl screamed in frustration, but her own screamed was drowned out by her lover's. She leapt off me, convinced of the futility of this effort and ran, but still full of fight.

I _love_ it when they fight!

She ran to their tent, then ran to her vehicle.

_Abandoning the fray? _I thought sarcastically, _and so soon, too?_

Maybe she was smarter than what I had creditted her.

_Ah,_ I thought as she rushed back toward me from the car, _not so smart after all, _and added a regretful:_ Ah, well!_

But I could live with this regret. I would exact my fun from her one way or the other.

But after I finished lunch, of course, I thought, as I continued to feed.

Alan's screams had grown noticeably weaker, hadn't they? Good. His screaming, albeit exquisite, did pain my ears with their volume. Had he just found out he had lungs? I could show them to him if he didn't believe it.

_Taaaannnggggk!_

A solid ring filled the air.

The girl had hit the back of my head with a crowbar.

_Huh, _I thought appreciatively, _feisty bitch._

"Ooow!" the feisty bitch cried, dropping the crowbar from nerveless fingers.

I smiled into Alan's neck, feeding, not letting a drop of his precious blood fall to the ground.

"Ah, God!" Alan cried weakly. "Ah, God! S-summer! Get away! Get away!"

"No," she screamed, kicking at my side. "I won't leave you, Alan," she wept. Then, to me, "Get off him!" she kicked. "Get off him, you bitch!" She kicked at me again, her rubber shoes bouncing off my side.

Need I say she was 'kicking ineffectually'? Really! This girl needed to learn to kick. What was she attempting? Did she think she was going to nudge me off her lover? He was mine now. Nothing could change that.

Nothing.

"Summer," Alan said, his voice sure, but I heard the fading of it, as I felt his heart slow and weaken in its beating, "get out of here."

_"No!"_ she screamed, and lashed out with her foot, hard.

_"Ow!" _she whined.

That must have hurt. Her.

"Get help, Summer," Alan tried again, "get help, Summer, please; quick!"

"I..." she said hesitantly.

"Hurry," Alan pleaded. "Get help, Summer, please! Go get help! I'll ..."

Alan squirmed under me, ineffectually, ... as much as I allowed him to. It helps the blood flow: movement.

"Alan!" she cried, heartbroken, "Oh, Alan! I ..."

"Hurry, Summer," he broke in, broken. "Hurry!" he said, desperation filling his voice.

"I ..." Summer said.

Then she ran toward their car, and as she ran, she cried.

She knew.

I lifted my head from Alan's neck.

My work was done.

Alan looked up at me with lifeless, dead eyes.

I smiled down at him, happy, contented.

"Alan," I said happily, "look at your lover." And I turned his dead head in my hand, o-so-gently to face the girl fumbling with the lock of the door of their car.

At the sound of my voice she stopped, frozen now.

"Bella Swan," I called out, my voice singing with the joy of the angels.

The girl turned, blinking at me, confused.

"Look at your lover. For the last time." I smiled at her, sitting on her lover, hip to hip, in the embrace of love-death.

The symbolism? If it was beyond her now; I'd remind her of it later.

She looked at me blankly, mute. A deer in the headlights.

I smiled once more, turned quickly back to face her Alan ... _my_ Alan now in death ... gripped my hands together in a fist, and brought them down onto, then through, his chest cavity.

He body grunted out the last bit of air in an _"Uhhh!" _of shock, as he noisily regurgitated his granola protein bar and gatorade, projectile vomitting copious amounts of blood in the process.

Such a shame. What a waste of good food stuck in his guts.

And he jismed out cum from his rock hard penis, staining his gym shorts, the dead-man's erection, and as he did, his bowels evacuated themselves noisily pooling around his ass and seeping out.

Such a lovely sight.

Alan was such a _pritty-boi-luvr_, wasn't he? lying in his own filth. Such a pritty-pritty boi to be all dead like that. I grinned evilly down at the mess of what was mostly Alan's insides, now all out for the world to see.

"You," the girl whispered, "You ..." she gasped and sobbed. "You fucking b-bitch."

She blinked away one, two, three tears, standing there, shocked, mute now after her whimpered outburst.

I turned and looked up at her, then stood, smiling so happily, locking her, my new prey, in my sights.

Her face went white. She turned in terror and determination to her car, and in one fluid motion, opened the door, sat in the driver's seat, cranked the engine which roared to life, then spun her tires backing out then tearing off down the roadway.

_Ah,_ I thought, _the chase!_

Her in a vehicle verses me on foot.

Totally unfair. Especially with a winding back-forest road.

Maybe if I gave her a minute head start, she'd have more of a sporting chance ...

I started counting slowly.

_1..2..3..._

I frowned.

_Eh,_ I thought. _Why put off for even a minute what I can have right now?_

Then leaned forward, coiled myself, then ...

The forest started to blur past me as I ran.

I _loved_ a good chase.

I prayed, for her sake, that she had put on her ... what do you call it? Safety harness? What was it again? Set belt? No, that's not it. Ah, yes! _Seat_ belt.

"Seat belt," I murmured, reminding myself of the term. A 'seat' 'belt' that is a harness that goes over the shoulder and over the lap and seems to serve no purpose to the seat and had no functionality as a belt.

'Seat' 'belt.' Yes. How ... quaint! I hope she wore it, for her sake.

I'd hate it if she got hurt.

Pain and agony is just such a ... 'downer'! It takes away all the fun because all her attention would be on her own specific pain, and not where it needed to be.

_"I'm coming for you, Bella Swan!" _I sang, so, so happily as I ran, filled with the joy of the chase, the forest blurring past me at eighty-three point aught six miles per hour.

I didn't take the road. It curved. I took the straight path, right through the forest.

And as I ran, I laughed, gleefully, just so filled with the joy and freedom of the run. Finally I had a purpose. Finally I had a reason to exist and not to run away anymore. Finally I had something to run toward.

Her.

She didn't know what was going to hit her.

But she'd learn.

I'd teach her.

* * *

**A/N: **Funny how this chapter begins and ends with a lovely morning jog. Imma thinking I'll put on my gear and make a 'Zombies, run!' go of it. So if you _do_ meet Victoria out on her morning jog, please _don't_ point her in my direction. After all, I look _nothing_ like Bella Swan, and I don't need a super-hot red-head lusting after me.

No. Wait. _`phfina smacks herself a few times incredulously. _What am I saying? A super-hot red-head lusting after me and I don't need what?

Um ... Hm. Um. _`phfina gets her little-girl's voice on: M__e Bella Swan. Me helpless waif in need of super-hot red head to work me over like nobody's business and make me shower her feet with devoted kisses, all the while begging to ..._

Um, I'll stop now.


	3. Listen

"You're insane!" she said to me softly. I laughed. I didn't respond. I didn't need to. She was getting it. Good.

* * *

Like I said: it was no contest.

Things always go my way. That's how it is. Every game James played, he won ...

The poisonous little girl's voice in my head, which sounded just like me, whispered: _until he didn't,_ reproachfully.

I told that voice to shut up. Annoying, that, the voice in my head: she gets louder and louder, especially when there's no one else to speak to, like now.

_Or when no one would listen to you, like before, _she said sadly.

Yes, or like then, when James and Laurent... They never listened. James just took me, when and as often as he pleased, and that was fine, I guess, as that his way. But he took me for granted, which hurt, or when he didn't he was annoyed with me.

Which hurt. So I learned not to prattle around James. And it wasn't prattle anyway. I just wanted to talk about this or that, you know: what was on my mind. And a girl, a woman, needs to talk through things, sometimes, and she needs to talk with somebody about it, somebody who'd listen.

And James wasn't interested in listening. James was ... 'interested' in my silence and my obedience. That was the only time his annoying face smoothed out into something more relaxed than distaste, like a man who stopped eating raw onions and then stopped sucking on lemons.

That's how James looked when I was silent and obedient: he looked relieved.

So I talked with Laurent. Or I tried to.

Laurent was more polite and refined, but ...

But that can hurt worse, when you're talking with someone, and he says the occasional 'Mm-hm.' and 'Ah, is that so?' But he never looked at me. He didn't give me his attention nor his interest. He just listened, patiently waiting for me to stop, and when I stop, he had nothing to say, I just stopped talking and we all just moved along as if I had just said nothing.

And I'd try to catch him on it, his rolling eyes, his pure disinterest, and say, "Why did I just say, Laurent?"

And he'd shrug, and repeat, verbatim, every word I had just said in 'our conversation.'

And that was a slap to the face, that he heard every word I said, but he just listened out of politeness and nothing more.

So we were the 'silent bunch.' That's how I referred to ourselves. We would wander from place to place, and I would get the urge to speak, to comment on something, or to talk over a thought that came into my head, ...

But then I would remember how that went the last time I tried that, tried to get a conversation going, or to elicit something from them... And how that just fell flat on its face, with me saying something, and they saying nothing, so I would just stand there, or just walk along beside them, looking and feeling foolish, silenced by their silence.

I thought I was lonely then, in their company. But the thing about company is ... that it's company, and you know their ways and they know yours and you surprise each other, sometimes, in the little things you do and the little things you don't that they notice or they don't, but they were there.

And now they're not.

But games. Sometimes we'd play games, with our food, which were easy games to win, or with each other, which were easy games to win, if you could pick the right games. Men were so easy to manipulate, so predictable. You just triggered their pride and they'd overextend themselves somehow. And, well, they found they had buttons they could push on me which would always get for them a delightful response.

An English girl has moxie, and she has her righteous pride. And here in the Colonies, an English girl could very easily make the mistake of feeling herself superior _(because she is,_ I whispered to myself) or feeling some unintentional affront against her, or her King, or her Country, and James and Laurent knew how to play that game, to get me all spun up like a top and away I'd spin, wreaking havoc left, right, and centre, and there they'd be, standing back and laughing at me. Openly.

It was funny... in a hurtful way.

But those were the games we played, with and against each other.

And we always played to win.

After all, what was the point of playing the game, otherwise?

This girl wanted to play a game with me.

The thing is I never played a game not to win it.

And I never, ever lost. Not against a human.

Ever.

I stepped out from the forest, fifty yards in front of the girl's little Oriental car, Korean, I think? So hard to tell the difference. It was careening down the fifteen-mile-per-hour road at the dangerous speed of forty-seven miles per hour.

Like I said: no contest.

She saw me. The girl saw me. Her tires dragged themselves across the paved road as she slammed on the brakes.

Thirty-two yards apart.

I stared at her, bloodied, but unblinking. She started at me, wide-eyed, mouth agape in disbelief.

She cursed, in a soft whisper to herself, "Shit."

I smirked. I heard her, clear as a bell, clear as Big Ben on a foggy London night.

Memories. Those are the only pain a vampire feels: the pain of remembering what was, good or bad, and what will never be again.

She looked at me, trying to understand how I could be in front of her, three miles away from where she left me last.

Then she shook her head, put her vehicle in reverse, and spun around in a 'donut,' marking the good road with the tracks her protesting tires left.

And she sped off, away from me ... but now, not toward the supposed safety of the park center, but deeper into the forest.

I smiled. My element.

I dived into the forest. It welcomed me with open arms.

What else could it do?

...

"Fuck," she uttered helplessly. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

Fifty yards, again. Me in front of her vehicle.

It was two chases today. Both fun. I wondered what gods I had pleased to receive not one but two blessed chases today. And then of course there were the murders, and the feeding. Today was just getting better and better.

_"FUCK!"_ She screamed at her steering wheel in intense frustration.

And it promised to get better as the day progressed, and it was still only morning!

I smiled at her. Waiting. Would she give me a third chase? She had to see by now the futility of that, didn't she? How much petrol did her vehicle contain? Would she keep driving back and forth until her reserve expired?

What, o, what would she do?

The suspense was killing me.

I don't think I ever had this much fun in all my existence. I never got to toy so openly with my prey like this! This was just ... _fun!_

The girl didn't seem to be having fun ... and that just made the whole situation funni..._er._

She didn't like that.

Desperation transformed to determination, and the girl bore down on herself, and ... o! would my delight know no bounds? ... she buckled her ... _seat_ belt, gripped her steering wheel with all the might in her compact, little body, and floored her accelerator.

O, this was just too much!

I smiled, the smile wreathing my face from ear to ear, and I whispered a delighted little, "Come to me, my little sweet!"

She saw. _"Die, you fucking bitch!" _she screamed, intense hate and rage reddening her face and squeezing her eyes nearly shut to slits, narrowing her focus: she saw just me, and only me.

I liked that. A lot. Her attention was where it was supposed to be.

Her vehicle roared up to to me, the engine whining, red-lined, fit to damage itself if she kept this up for a prolonged duration, and then how would she get out of the forest, hm? Did that consequence occur to her at all, or was she just solely focused on this one thing, eliminating me, at the cost of everything else?

Hm? Hm?

Now, I could have done something here. I could have stood my ground and let the car ram into me, all of its mass with the force of its accumulated momentum.

I could have done that, and brought my fists up and brought them down on the hood of her vehicle and show her what the inside of a reciprocating engine looked like while it was running.

I could have done that.

Or I could do what I did instead.

I simply, at the last instant, twisted around and stepped aside, and let her smash, full speed, into an obliging tree.

I mean, did she not consider that she was operating a vehicle in an imprudent manner in the middle of a national forest preserve?

What did they ever teach children in schools these days?

In my day, they didn't have schools. Not for most children. Not for children like me, starving, plague-ridden, sick and dying. We got along with common sense, as best as we could, ...

Or we didn't.

Like this girl, here.

_Ku-RASH!_

The sound of metal crumpling, an engine running, dropping, burying itself into the ground and the tree, the sound of glass splintering into hundreds of pieces filling the air, the grunt of shock of a little girl behind a vehicle very much more powerful, more weighty than her, suddenly and surprisingly stopped?

It was a cacophony of sound.

And I watched it all unfold, right in front of me, the only eyes in the world that were there and could appreciate the beauty of this destruction.

It was art. Art in motion. And it was created just for me.

The tree groaned as it took the unexpected blow. Its foundation, its roots, remained unmoved; it was that strong, but the trunk shuddered and I saw the fibres of it shake, twist and break.

The tree looked whole, but it was damaged, perhaps permanently, perhaps it would take years, nay, decades to mend itself, as best it could.

And this was the impact of humanity on nature.

The girl was also shaken to the core. I looked at her, holding my breath.

Surprisingly, she wasn't hurt too badly. Or, not so surprisingly, as autocars these days were designed to take all the force of a blow, cocooning their precious cargo in their metal embrace.

As a lover held her beloved. If she loved him, and he loved her.

I smiled sadly at that. James had never held me like this car held this girl: protectively, lovingly. Possessively, yes, but ...

I stooped down on my haunches, so we were now eye-to-eye. The girl stared straight ahead, totally unaware of me. She breathed in and out, five times, shocked, and trying to absorb the shock of it all.

A single tear fell from her eye, was it frustration? fury? hurt? anger? surprise? shock? all of these things?

"Ow!" she whimpered, surprised and hurt.

I chuckled lightly, delighted to be surprised at her forlorn utterance.

"'Ow,' indeed!" I said happily, "Did that hurt you, little Bella Swan?"

The girl blinked twice, gathering her wits about her, and looked at me, trying to take me in, trying to fit me into something she understood.

I could see she wasn't having much success with that.

So she address what she could. "I'm not ... My name's not 'Bella Swan,'" and she blinked at me, blearily, trying to see if I understood.

"Mm-hm," I said easily.

Oh, I understood her, all right! The question was whether I cared.

The answer to that was that I cared so little I didn't even bother disagreeing with her. Agreement and disagreement implied you had something to talk with somebody who was an equal to you in some way.

That was not the case here.

"Let's get you out of your vehicle," I said. "I don't think you need it anymore."

"Huh?" she said stupidly, still drunk in her shock.

I smiled lightly then grasped the door of her car.

My hands sunk into the metal, crinkling it. It shrieked in protest as I wadded the protesting metal into my fists.

Then I pulled.

The door popped right out of its hinge, _pop!_ just like that.

The girl's hands were still on her steering wheel at the 10 o-the-clock and 2 o-the-clock positions. Her seat belt fixed her firmly into her seat.

Safety first! I always say.

I snickered at my own joke. I never said that.

I grasped the loop of her seat belt by her shoulder and the single strand by her hip, and gave the slightest, gentlest tug.

The seat belt, itself, didn't tear. It was made of stronger stuff than what I had thought. No, the base machinery simply ripped itself from the vehicle's frame, metal screaming against metal as it came undone.

That was ... interesting.

Everything is 'interesting' for those who choose to observe it. And a vampire is a very observant creature ...

When she's interested in being so.

I then grasped her bucket seat by its base and ... _tugged_ her out of her vehicle.

Her small hands slid nervelessly off her steering wheel, but they slid off sadly, as if they knew they were leaving what was familiar now. I put the seat down onto the road then gently removed the girl from the seat and sat her on the road, and seeing her slump, guided her to a resting position on the tar.

I then showed her how to kick.

'Soccer,' 'futbal' was invented in England. Thieves had had their hands cut off, so they played with pigskin or someone's obliging head this little game of kickball, because they couldn't play anything else.

I lashed out with my foot and kicked the seat from its base.

It sailed fifty feet into the forest.

I then went to her car, and, it being light, made of metal that bent and crumpled, I simply wadded up what I could, which was most of it, then threw that into the forest.

I was displeased to see it not quite sail, but I did throw it, and it did bounce once, twice, thrice, before disappearing into the forest, totally obscured by the foliage.

I turned back to the girl.

She was watching me the whole time, in shock, belief and disbelief warring with each other in her eyes.

"Well," I said breezily, and I went to the girl, and picked her up. She tried to cringe away from me, she couldn't: so she just cringed into herself.

Not that it mattered.

We plunged into the forest.

"Where are you taking me?" she said quietly.

I smiled, just so ... happy! I had a toy to play with.

Where was I taking her? Did it matter? She was with me now. That's all that mattered for her.

"Home," I said simply.

"Oh," she said.

_'Home is where the heart is,'_ or so they say. Do 'they' know what that means? At all? The heart is an organ that pumped blood into my mouth. The heart is always, always in the chest, unless and until I remove it from there to show it to the last light in your dying eyes.

_Home is where the heart is, _which meant, to me: home was wheresoever I desired it to be. The world was my home, the forest my dwelling place, until I so chose to make my dwelling elsewhere.

_'Oh,'_ she had said. Perhaps she understood me, perhaps she didn't, and she was just saying, 'Oh.' I didn't know.

I didn't really care. I'd find out, either way. Soon, I'd know everything about this girl, even things she didn't know about herself.

After a while she turned her head, trying to look at me as I ran. "Are you going to ..." she said. "Are you going to do ... that to me when we get ... 'home'?" she asked hesitantly.

I laughed. "Oh, oh, oh, Bella," I sang. "You are going to _wish_ that I would do that to you. You are going to _beg _me to do that to you, and give you that sweet release. Oh, yes, indeed."

She took this in silently.

"I'm not Bella," she said.

"Uh, huh," I said.

"No," she said firmly. "Really. I'm not this person. You made a mistake. I'm not Bella. I'm not."

"Uh, huh," I said easily.

She was quiet for a second. "Do you even hear one word I'm saying?" she demanded, just a touch of her righteous anger colouring her voice.

The thing is: that didn't work on me.

"Yes," I said simply.

"I'm not this Bella," she tried again. "You don't have to ... You didn't have to do that. I'm not her."

_She,_ I corrected her English in my mind.

Americans didn't speak English. Not King's English. But try telling them that.

It was just so much easier simply killing them instead of trying to convince these obstinate up-starters of anything, particularly about their mother tongue. That they neither owned nor originated.

But try telling them that.

Just so much easier to silence them forever.

"Like that matters at all," I said primly.

"It matters to _me!"_ she said indignantly.

I nodded, admiring her own bit of moxie.

I love a good challenge.

This girl?

A good challenge?

We shall see, shan't we.

"Well, Bella, if that makes you last longer ..." I said dismissively.

She drew in a sharp breath.

"You just don't ..." she said. "You just don't care that I'm not her, do you?"

I chuckled. "Oh, I care. I care _very much._ You, my dear, sweet girl, are Bella Swan to me, and that is what matters. Your view is otherwise irrelevant."

She lifted her head up, craning her neck, trying to look at my face.

"You're insane," she said firmly.

I smiled and laughed very lightly.

I didn't respond. I didn't have to.

What did I care about her little declarations? Did they matter? At all? No.

I did care about other things she'd be saying. Eventually. I couldn't wait to hear those things.

Or I could wait. I was a very patient person.

She slumped her head back into my shoulder as I ran, and began to cry silently, breaths coming in tight little gasps.

She was starting to get it now.

Good.

I ran.

To where?

Home.

* * *

**A/N:** James and Laurent never listened to Victoria. They never cared.

Victoria's not listening to what this girl has to say to her. She just doesn't care.

Is it ... why is it people in power, men and women, don't listen? And they particularly don't listen to women. Why don't they even care to? Why won't Victoria even listen to this girl, especially after she knows what it feels like not to be listened to?


	4. Play

_Home again!_ I have me my Bella. Time to ... play.

* * *

I brought Bella home.

Time to play.

It was the campsite we returned to, the one she so desperately fled. The one the other campers would never leave. Alan was still lying there in front of the other staked campers.

He wasn't moving. He wasn't 'gonna.'

I like slang. It makes me feel so ... 'cool' and 'with it.' I like being 'cool.' It beats being poor, and beaten, starving and sick.

It beats being dead.

Ha, ha. I _am_ dead, ... undead, ... whatever.

But I wasn't _dead-_dead like Alan and the others. Poor bastards.

And but those poor bastards were lucky, or that's what Bella would be thinking, ... shortly.

There was a central fire pit for the camp ground, benches made of large, hardened logs encircled it. Campers probably built a fire at night, toasted marshmallows, sang Kumbaya, ... all that.

I have no idea what marshmallows taste like. I know they don't taste like blood, so they're shit to me.

I have no idea what 'Kumbaya' means. I have no care to know.

I sat Bella on one of the logs facing me. My back was to the dead spectators, so she had a very clear view of what I could do.

When I wasn't trying.

"Now, Bella, ..." I began.

"I told you that's not my name," she cut in angrily. "My name's ..."

_SMACK!_

I had been smiling at her rude interruption, so amusing, but I didn't need the offered information, and she needed a lesson in obedience.

Here I was trying to tell her what was coming, give her a little guidance, but she sees fit not to listen, but to interrupt? And then start volunteering nonessential information?

My hand lashed out on its own, not even awaiting the command from me, and connected with her face, connecting, staying there, pulling her from her seat then sliding across her cheek, letting her go fly free.

It was a light slap, so she landed a mere seven feet from where she had been sitting.

_"Woof!"_ she cried as her body hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from her. By the time I got up from my seat, leisurely, and picked up her crumpled form, she was moaning a soft 'owww!' lightly, clasping her cheek.

I sat her back on her log, made sure she was still sitting when I let her go, then returned to my seat.

"Now," I said easily, "Bella ..."

"That's not ..."

_SMACK!_

'Turn the other cheek'?

Bella got that opportunity.

Now she sailed in the opposite direction, right into the fire pit.

Oh, for goodness sake! Don't worry: the fire had been out and cold since last night!

What kind of person do you think I am? I wasn't planning on setting her on fire or anything.

Well, not yet, anyway.

I walked into the fire pit, my bare feet crushing the cinders into grey-black dust and I picked Bella up by the shoulders, just a little bit off the ground.

She was a mess. Ash-dust mingled with tears giving the effect of mascara running where there was none, so she looked like one of those beggars in one of those third-world countries: dirtied, tired, defeated.

"Bella," I snarled quietly right into her face. She wouldn't look at me. "Tell me your name."

She was sobbing softly and gasping for breath. Some girls cry because they know their crying evokes pity in the person hurting them, and that person stops.

Bella knew, instinctively, that I wasn't the kind of person who indulged in pity.

I indulged in other things.

So she wasn't crying to elicit pity from me. She was crying because the 'woe-is-me' was in full force.

And the pain might have had something to do with her tears, too.

"F-fuck you, bitch," she said.

You know how somebody fights, not because they're brave, but because ... there's nothing left to do? They're done for, but they can't give up, because they've already passed that point, so they just fight, just with that last bit of reserve, so they can get the shit beat out of them, because they know that's going to happen anyway, and they have nothing to gain by giving up and nothing to lose in that last act of defiance?

You know those kinds of people?

I smiled at her. "Wrong answer, Bella," I said factually.

Then I shoved her down, hard, ... for her .. back into the cinders.

"Ugh!" the air she had tried to recover rushed out of her lungs as her back hit the ground.

I picked her up again as she drew in a gasp of air, and threw her down again. Hard.

"Aouf!" she gasped.

I picked her up again, and threw her down hard.

"Unnnnngh!" she whined.

I pulled her up from the cinders and stood, holding her up.

"Bella," I prompted, and raised my eyebrows at her. "Your name."

She took a good ten seconds gasping for air around my hand lightly holding her up by her throat, then she took another ten seconds to compose herself, still panting hard.

The left side of my mouth twitched upward into a lopsided grin. I was waiting for her answer.

She, very deliberately, spit in my face. Spittle went into my eyes and dripped off my nose.

I blinked twice and nodded. _Good girl._ I thought, almost ... proudly.

I didn't last this long, when it was Anne who broke me then so casually turned me.

You break your newborns before you turn them. They're easier to control after that way.

"You can beat me," she said, "you can hurt me," she said. "But you're never going to get me to give up. Ever." she said. "My name's Summer Fergusson, not Bella-whatever, and nothing you can do to me will _ever_ change that."

My lips twitched at this.

"Fergusson," I said, looking at her eye-to-eye, and not liking that at all.

"Yes," she said, her eyes narrowed just ever so slightly.

"Scottish," I stated.

The girl just kept glaring back at me.

I don't know if she knew if she were Scottish or not. Her eyes didn't give anything away.

I frowned. "The Scots are known for their pride," I said.

It was true. It was easier to kill a Scotsman than to break him. Far easier.

I could ... break this girl but ...

But it'd be far easier if she let me.

I sat her back down on the log.

"'Never,' huh?" I said, standing over her.

She glared up at me. Her eyes answered for her. _Never._

_"Hm," _I said thoughtfully, displeased.

I was quiet for a moment, regarding her.

I didn't like this turn of events.

"I want you to do something for me," I said. "I'm going to walk away for a brief moment, and in that time I want you to count each person I've hanged here in front of you. When I come back, I want you to tell me your count of the number of people I've killed here. Look into their faces as you count them. This is important: for you, and for what comes next."

And I left.

I went into the forest and found myself a nice adolescent sapling. It was about a half-a-foot in diameter and rose about twelve feet into the air. I uprooted it and stripped it down to a nice long pole and made sure the tip was nice and sharp.

I returned to the campsite.

The girl was not at her seat.

Not a problem. I laid the spear down, and then walked to the parked cars, and lifted up the jeep by its front that she was hiding under.

Only one human heartbeat in the vicinity.

Playing hide and seek with a vampire. I mean: really?

The shocked look on her face ... priceless.

I picked her up as she quickly tried to recover and scramble away, and dropped the jeep back down.

Hard.

Its frame bent, and settled slightly, absorbing the shock of the impact.

I then carried her back to her seat and sat her back down.

"I forgot to mention: stay," I said off-handedly.

She so wanted to snarl at me, but that worked only partially, because she couldn't ignore the spear in my hand.

I buried it into the ground, front-and-centre of the crowd of dead people.

"Hi, dead people," I said airily.

They didn't answer.

The girl didn't find it funny, either.

Humour.

Wheresoever did humour go this last half-century?

I turned and sat back down in front of the girl, crossed my legs casually, then put my chin on top of my hand in a thinking position. Then I looked at her.

She looked between me and our audience.

She couldn't stand the silence. "What?" she demanded petulantly, then winced at my raised eyebrow response.

"So, what," she pushed, "you gonna stake me? Is that what ..."

"No," I said.

She blinked in surprise. She wasn't expecting that response, nor the cool, off-hand way I delivered it.

She blushed and looked confused now.

She was a fighter, all right, and I'll give her that, but I wasn't giving her anything to fight, and now she was befuddled because of that: all keyed up, all ready to be courageous, but not expecting nothing.

I smirked.

I could tell she hated my smirk.

Good.

"Then what!" she demanded angrily.

I sat up quickly, causing her to flinch backward slightly. I smirked again. I waved behind me.

"How many people?" I said.

She looked away, ashamed and angry, and mumbled: "Twelve."

"Good girl," I said.

Her eyes whipped back to mine and she glared.

"You can count," I said, pleased.

"Fu-..." she hissed.

"But you missed Alan," I said and waved down to the mess that was his body. "Did you forget to count him? Did you forget him already?"

The girl's eyes widened in shock, and she gasped.

"N-..." she said.

"Because I didn't," I said.

That hit her. "You ..."

"You know," I said conversationally. "I was the last person he was with when he died."

_"Because you killed him!" _she shrieked.

"Yeah," I said, "'cause I killed him, and what where you doing, precisely at the moment of his death? Hm? Running away, perhaps?"

"That's not true, and that's not fair. He told me to go get help, and I couldn't ..."

She broke off and looked away.

"You couldn't stop me, because you weren't strong enough, and you weren't good enough," I said.

She became stone.

"You know," I said. "If our places were reversed, ..."

_... and they were, _my little voice said, ...

"I would've gladly traded places. If I truly loved my J-... my lover, I would've rather have died in his stead. But you obviously didn't love Alan."

Her lips tightened up and she pushed her hand over her face, not really clearing it, just moving the soot around a bit in the slime of her tears.

She looked at me with pure hate. "Fuck. You."

"Eloquent, aren't we," I said, unaffected. "Truth hurts, doesn't it?"

"You want me to feel bad about this?" she demanded coldly, raising her chin. "Well, good for you: I feel bad. I did everything I could, and I just wasn't good enough. Is that what you want to hear, you f-fu..." She drummed her fingers for a second, realizing that she was the one lowering herself by insulting me with her name-calling, but not knowing how else she could respond. "Is that what you want to hear? You win, okay? Happy? Now get this over with, because I'm done with you, you cunt."

Then she turned her whole body away from me and crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip, trying to look defiant.

It was actually kind of cute. I giggled a tinkling little laugh.

Her whole body shuddered in anger. She tried to pretend to be a stone, unaffected.

But you can't pretend to be a stone. You either are one, like me, or you aren't. Like her.

"Yes, sweetie," I said easily, "You weren't good enough, because guess who's the last person who made him cum, huh?"

She shook. "Bullshit." She whispered.

"Uh, huh," I said.

I went over to Alan.

"You see this?" I said. She was still turned away, but the very corner of her eye followed me, I saw.

I wiped the front of his shorts, blood covered my hand, but then I stood and separated my fingers.

Blood doesn't connect your fingers with slime like that.

I flicked my hand and the blood and semen flew across the distance between us and splattered against her face and chest.

"You saw him grinding against me," I said. "I should've just ripped off his shorts so he could've cum inside me. What a waste of sperm, right? What a shame, too. And I could've been all yummy-warm inside, but no, he couldn't wait to blow his load. Was he like that with you last night? Boom, he's done, and you're full of cum. Or do you practice ... what do you call it? 'Safe sex' whatever that means."

She hung her head. "Shut up," she said. "Just please shut up."

She sniffled.

I nodded. "Yeah," I said. "Mr. Quickdraw, the one-shot won-..."

_"SHUT UP!" _she screamed.

I shrugged. "Okay. I win again," I pointed out. "Right?" I pressed.

She looked further away and whispered a sad, 'What_ever.'_

I stood by Alan, the one-shot wonder for a second, then returned to my seat in front of the girl.

"So you're not Bella Swan, and nothing I can do can change that. Okay. You win." I said.

She didn't move.

"You happy?" I demanded.

She was quiet.

"So, as you say, my mistake, and all these dead people, ... thir_teen_ by my count," I emphasized the point, "because 'you're insane,' right? That's what you called me."

My lip twitched up slightly.

"But we have a problem, Bella," I said.

She sighed.

"You see," I explained, "I was going to kill just you and your Alan last night, and nice and quickly, too, but then ... oh, Bella, there you were, and I, frankly, did not know what do to with myself, for I never expected to have this opportunity just given to me."

"Why do you hate this person so much?" she asked in a small voice.

"Uh, huh," I said dismissively. "Doesn't matter to you, right, because you're not her. And even if you were, you wouldn't know the tenth, nay, the hundre-... nay: the milleth of what my hate is for you ... excuse me, for her."

She looked at me at this.

"Look," she tried reason. "I don't know what ..."

"Yes, you don't know," I said, forcefully interrupting her, then added: "and you don't care, right?"

I waited.

The girl bit her lip. She was smart; she knew there was no right answer to my question.

"So, now I have a problem," I said. "I went to all this effort to get me a Bella Swan to ... _play_ with, but you just don't want to play the game. Well, sweetie. _I_ payed the price for you, but ..."

I shrugged.

"You don't own me," she hissed.

I smiled lightly.

"Right-o," I said easily. "I don't own you. But this is not the only campground in this forest park, right?"

She blinked.

"And you're so sure you're not Bella Swan. You _know_ this, see? Well, if you're not Bella Swan, and there's _nothing_ I can do to make you her, well, then, you're free to go. All you have to do first is help me pick the person who is Bella Swan. I'll gather them up and bring them here, one-by-one, and since you're so sure that ..."

"This is no fair!" she shouted desperately, her eyes wide.

_"And since you're so sure you're not Bella Swan!" _I screamed right back.

The air shook. The girl gasped, then doubled over and vomitted, grasping her head in pain.

Okay. Maybe I overdid that.

I didn't shatter her eardrums, however that ringing in her ears? Those were the nerve cells screaming and dying. Permanent damage. Oh, well.

So it begins.

I continued, even again: "Then we'll skewer the ones you're also so sure who aren't Bella Swan, until we find her, then I'll play with the one you point out to me who is, and you can be on your way. How does that sound?"

She bit her lip and turned away from me again, putting her head into her hands.

"Bella," I said. "What's your name?"

She didn't answer for a second, then she sniffled.

My lip twitched upward. I would have giggled with delight, but this was an important moment for her.

The moment she gave up.

"Just nod your head, love," I offered gently.

"Is your name Bella Swan?"

She held herself in with her arms, her hands covering her face, and she rocked herself, swallowing hard. Two, then three tears fell through her hands onto the ground in front of her.

She nodded just a little tiny nod of her head.

I stood, glided over to her, then sat behind her, my side touching her back. Her back tightened up, and she shuddered at my light touch.

"Good girl," I said softly, and kissed the crown of her head.

I smiled warmly. "Let's ... _play, _Bella."


	5. Little Shit

Oh, my, my, my. This girl really is Bella Swan. I call her a little shit, and she glows with pride? And, furthermore, she ... wait. No. Nonono. What's happening to me?

* * *

I stood.

"So, Bella," I said, now that we've cleared up the little question who she was from now on, "stand up."

She sniffled, wiped her grimy face, once and stood, facing me.

She quickly looked away. Apparently, she was too good to look at me.

"No, no, Bella," I said, "None of that."

My left hand lashed out, grasping her lightly by the neck.

That got her attention. She looked at me, all right, her eyes wide with surprise.

I coiled my right hand into a fist and held it up to her so she could see it.

She looked between me and my hand. I smiled lightly, then:

_One. Two. Three._ I landed three solid punches to her gut in rapid succession.

The air left her in a whoosh, and that's when I let go with my steadying hand. She crumpled to the ground and grasped her knees in a fetal position, her gasps little screaming wheezes as she tried to suck in air.

I gently reached out with my foot on her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. She was still wound up into a ball, her eyes tightly shut as she gasped for air.

"Look at me, Bella," I ordered gently.

I can't tell you _how fucking good_ it felt to have Bella Swan at my feet like this.

I'm so glad she agree to play with me. It ... _might_ have been less fun if I had to start pulling teeth to convince her. Literally.

She took two more big gulps of air before she collected herself enough to open her eyes to look up at me. Two angry tears welled up and fell down the side of her face into her hair.

I nudged gently with my foot, pushing her shoulder flatter into the ground and nodded my head up once.

She understood. She let go of her knees and straightened out on the ground, her hands by her sides.

My lips twitched slightly.

Even in her obedience, she fought me every step of the way. I saw it in her eyes. _'I'll do what you say, but you can never have me!'_

God, I loved this.

"I have a question for you, Bella," I said, looking down at her.

She bit her lip and looked away.

She didn't know this would be a participatory game. But what's the point of playing if it weren't?

"My question is," I said, "did you like those sucker punches I gave to you?"

She looked away angrily.

I snickered. "Nah," I said easily. "Just playin' with ya, Bella. My real question is this: am I breaking you? Is that what you think I'm doing to you?"

She sniffled angrily and tried to wipe her nose. My leg was in the way. I didn't move it off her shoulder. She looked away again, giving up on trying to regain her dignity, what little of it she had. The she sighed angrily again and looked back up at me, focusing in on my question.

Then shying away from it. "I don't know," she said angrily.

I laughed lightly.

"No, Bella," I said. "That's not good enough, and you know it. Try again, please."

She sighed again, and looked back at me.

She drew a breath to speak.

"Bella," I said. "Remember this."

Her eyebrows creased. She blinked.

"What?" she asked, genuinely confused, eyebrows still creased.

_So fucking cute!_ I screamed in my head.

Little Bella Swan was so God-damn cute when she truly tried. And this girl was Bella Swan down to her mannerisms. I mean, she wasn't: she was healthier, being physically active, she was older, she was a lot more confident, and maybe that came with age and the certainty of who you are, I didn't know, but she, like the archetype she unconsciously followed, really needed to be honest to who she was, and she couldn't bury that under her petulant defiance nor her weak pretense of indifference.

She was neither an angry person nor an indifferent one, and she was just terrible at faking either of those things, or anything, for that matter.

Bella Swan, my Bella Swan, was not a faker, and I enjoyed her honesty. When she was confused, she was honestly confused, and from that honesty flowed a genuine need to know the truth.

Even as it killed her.

Stupid little shit.

I.

_Loved._

This game.

"Remember, sweetie," I said, "that I asked you do something, and instead of do that, you do this: you disengage, thinking whatever your little heart desires that you are somehow superior to your situation, that somehow you can get away with this passive defiance, when, in fact, you cannot. Remember," I summarized, "that I asked you to do something, you didn't, and then I had to ask you again, raising the ..."

I chuckled at my anticipated joke. "Well, raising the stakes." I didn't need to look behind me at my staked trophies.

"Bella," I said, "don't make me ask things twice of you, huh? The consequences ..."

I let those words hang in the air.

She opened her mouth to speak.

"You wouldn't like them," I said.

She shut her mouth.

She waited. I waited.

I grew impatient. "Are you going to answer my question now?"

"May I speak now?" she asked in a small voice.

I _tsk_ed. "What do you think, Bella?"

She looked away.

"Nn-nuh," I tutted.

She looked back at me.

"So," I said, "am I breaking you? Yes, or no?"

"Uh," she said, and her tongue just snuck out and touched the corner of her lip.

_Fucking God!_ I screamed in my head, this girl was Bella Swan down to her fucking _uhs_ and her fucking embarrassed tongue as she worked her way through her answer.

Her tongue? Touching her lips?

I almost creamed myself.

I could barely contain my glee. It was going to be _heaven_ making this girl suffer. Even after she lost who she was and couldn't tell anymore, even then it might be hard for me to remember that these two girls were not one and the same.

"I think ..." she said slowly. "Um, no."

I blinked down at her. "Why?" I said.

"Well," she said.

_Fuck me._ She drew out her thoughtful 'well' just like Bella Swan did.

She blinked at my wide smile, and smiled tentatively back at me, thinking I was pleased at her thought-out response and encouraging her.

"Well," she said again, "I thought that, 'yes,' I mean, why else would you be doing this, but then I thought why would you ask me if it were just 'yes.'"

I blinked at her.

"That's what I thought," she added a bit defensively, seeing my displeasure at her answer.

"That's what you thought?" I said, disappointment colouring my voice.

"Um, well, yeah," she said, really defensively now.

I shook my head. "No." I said.

She blinked. "'No'?" she asked, then clarified: "I was wrong?"

"No," I said again. "No," I said a bit more angrily. "You said you 'thought,' but there isn't a fucking thought in your empty head, is there, Bella?"

She blinked at that: miffed.

The thing about stupid fucks? They hate being called stupid fucks. People actually think that they think, but when you ask them a simple question, all you get is this stupid circular self-absorbed sophistry.

I sighed. I had to explain it to her.

"Let me tell you something about breaking somebody, Bella. I've done it a lot, and it's ... no fun what you end up with. You see, ..." I said, and I lifted my foot from her shoulder and put it over her face, pushing the side of her face into the dirt.

She squirmed under my foot, affronted at my casually slighting her.

"That." I said. "That right there. Your reaction. You're a little fighter, Bella. You can't help it. Not now. But if I broke you, there'd be no fight left in you at all, and where's the fun of that, huh? Why would I want to break you and remove the whole point of this?"

I lifted my foot slightly.

"Kiss my foot, Bella," I said.

Her body shuddered, and she took two breaths.

"Don't make me ask again," I said.

She shut her eyes tightly, turned her face to the sole of my foot, and kissed it, lightly.

"There," I said, removing my dirty, soot-covered foot from her face and crouched down by her head.

"You see," I said, "I don't want to break you. You fight me every step of the way, Bella. You can't help it; you can't stop yourself. _And I love that, Bella." _I almost actually drooled when I said those words; there was so much venom in my voice.

I smiled and continued. "I love the fight in you. I love every little bit of fight that you have, Bella." I stood. "So, no, I'm not breaking you with this. This is just our little time getting to know each other. Me setting the rules of the game, as it were. And the first rule, Bella, besides the fact that there are no rules, so ..." I laughed lightly. "So, you may as well get used to that. The first rule is: you disobey, you pay, or somebody else pays, so don't fuck around with that, because I certainly won't."

I looked down at her. "Stand up." I said.

She looked up at me and stood as best as she could.

Human being are so awkward getting up when they're put down on the ground.

I smirked at her.

Then lashed out and punched her hard in the stomach.

"Oof!" she gasped, shocked and surprised. She crumpled to the ground, more hurt from the suddenness and the injustice of it than from the actual blow itself.

She gasped for a few seconds, then looked up at me, hurt and confused. My foot reached out to her shoulder and unwound her from her crumpled position.

"Get up, Bella," I said.

She looked up at the sky and swallowed, trying to catch her breath. But I also saw the war being waged within herself. _'Do I stand up again?'_ I saw her ask herself. _'Why?' _I saw her ask herself. I saw her wanting to give up, and I saw her wanting to fight me with everything she had.

Humans think they are so sophisticated: so advanced and developed.

The irony is that humans are an open book, and it takes almost nothing at all for them to spill everything in their guts for me to see, plain as day.

'Spill their guts,' by which I mean literally and figuratively.

She wearily stood, then dragged her eyes up to mine.

I smirked.

My hand flashed out to her stomach.

She wailed and crumpled around my fist.

Then gasped.

I hadn't actually hit her this time, did I?

I snickered evilly. "'Psyche'!" I crowed.

She gave me a hurt look.

So I hurt her. I pulled back, lightning fast, then I hit her, hard, in the stomach.

She wailed as she fell to the ground, crying, hurt physically, but hurt twice as much with my cruelty.

That's what people don't get. Pain is nothing. It's just pain, and you can handle it, really, if you're motivated to.

Not that I've personally experienced pain in a long, long time, but the pain I did experience, the pain of a thousand searing Suns? I was giving nothing of that to this girl. If she wanted pain, I could give it to her, because I knew pain, personally, and I knew how to give it in all its exquisite and agonizing glory.

She'd be getting that. No, what hurt her now, of course, was the injustice.

People are all about fairness and slights.

And they are about much, much more beyond those surface things.

But to hurt a person, simply do something that's unjust. That's all.

Poor Bella cried and cried at the unfairness of it all.

_"Why?" _she wailed to me. "I did what you wanted!"

I laughed. "And that's why I hit you, little one."

She stopped sobbing to look up at me, but tears still fell.

"That makes no sense!" she complained.

"To you it doesn't," I said evenly, then I squatted down in the squalor next to her.

She flinched away.

"Don't," I snarled, "do that."

She looked at me, shocked.

"It's not going to help you at all, and it pisses me off, and Bella," I warned, "you really, _really, _don't want me pissed off."

She swallowed.

"Why did I hit you, Bella?" I asked her.

She blinked up helplessly at me.

"I already told you that. Because you obeyed me. You disobey me, you get punished. You obey me, you get punished. It's that simple, Bella, really. It's just that you've got your eyes on yourself and what you're doing, thinking that has any meaning at all." I said. "What if it doesn't, though? What if there's _nothing_ you can do to save yourself from what I want. You be good, you be bad, there's nothing to stop me, and there's no way you can game me or win me over or escape me, Bella."

I smiled down at her.

"There's nothing you can do, Bella, to in any way, shape, or form, because why? Because you're just a little shit." I said.

I looked down at her. "You get me?" I demanded angrily.

She swallowed and looked away. "Yes," she whispered.

She didn't get it.

Oh, she probably tried, for her own sake, trying to be agreeable so I wouldn't hurt her, but she didn't even begin to get the magnitude of this.

She still thought she had some role to play in the Grand Scheme of Things.

This would be a very educational experience for her.

She should thank me.

She would be. Eventually.

"Uh, huh," I said, totally unconvinced, and she saw that in my glare, and that made her afraid. "What, exactly, did you get, Bella?"

She bit her lip and swallowed. "That I'm a shit," she said sadly.

I snorted. "No, not even that, I said you're a _little_ shit. Don't twist my words around."

I glared down at her. "Tell me again, Bella, because you're still not getting it."

She swallowed again, hard this time, and looked away as she whispered. "That ... I'm a little shit."

"Uh, huh," I said. "And there's _nothing_ you can do, Bella, say it."

She blew out a breath. "And I can't do anything," she said sadly.

I looked down at her.

"Get up," I ordered.

She looked up at me helplessly.

I raised my eyebrow to her.

She slowly pulled herself up, squatting in place so we were eye to eye.

I was actually pretty pleased at that. If she stood over me?

_Ooh!_ The fury I would unleash on her if she thought she could stand tall over me.

I wonder if she knew this instinctively.

"So," I said, "do you get it, Bella, that you're a shit and there's nothing you can do to make anything better for yourself, at all?"

She looked down at the ground. "Yes," she whispered.

"You know what that means?" I asked her.

"Yeah," she said.

"Really?" I demanded.

She looked up at me cautiously. "Yeah," she said.

"Tell me what that means," I said.

She bit her lip, "Well," she said.

I snickered.

She blinked.

"Well, go on!" I barked impatiently.

Her face went white.

If I flinched now, just a hair, she probably would jump right out of her skin.

"Well, ..." she tried again.

I swear to God I had to hold back the laughter every single time she said her little 'well, ...'

"It means that you're going to make my life hell 'cause you ..."

She trailed off sullenly looking away.

"No," I said. "Wrong."

She looked back at me.

"You just don't get it, do you, Bella?" I said.

Pure confusion covered her face.

She looked down. "No, I guess I don't," she said, confusion turning to anger and betrayal.

All part of the game.

"It means, little Bella," I said calmly, "that every good thing from now on comes from me, that's what it means."

If her face had registered confusion before, it now was flooded with it.

Utterly.

"I ..." she said, blinking. "I just don't get that."

I smiled wanly at her. "I know that, Bella."

I reached out to her.

She flinched back.

"Don't do that," I growled.

She bit her lip hard. "Sorry," she said.

I put my hand on her chest.

"You feel that?" I demanded.

She nodded, face white, eyes wide.

"Every single beat of your little heart is my gift to you, Bella," I said. "You please me, you get the next one. You make me angry, I'll make you _regret_ the next one, or stop it, or stop somebody else's, although I really don't give a shit about anybody else, Bella, and if you were smart, which you're not, you wouldn't give a shit about anybody else now either. You know what your sole concern is from now on?" I demanded. "It's not anybody else, Bella; so who is it?"

"It's me;" she said sadly, "I guess I should be cared about ... sorry," she corrected herself quickly. "I guess I should care about me. I guess."

My lip twitched up.

I waited, her little heart beating in her chest, hard.

She looked up at me. I was shaking my head in disappointment.

Realization hit her like a truck.

"Oh," she said.

"It's who, again, Bella?" I demanded.

She looked down at the ground. "It's you," she whispered sadly.

"You're answer's not on the ground, Bella," I said, just a touch of anger in my voice.

She looked back up at me.

"Well?" I said.

"It's you," she said.

I smiled. "Good girl," I said pleased.

She looked down.

"Bella," I said, addressing her.

She looked back up at me.

"My little shit," I said and smirked.

Her cheeks coloured.

"You stink." I said.

She didn't know what to do with that.

"You smell like sweat, shit, and cum," I said.

Bella hung her head. "Gee! Thanks!" she said, trying to muster sarcasm, but only able to muster sadness.

"I want you to do something for me, sweetheart," I said kindly. She looked back up at me.

You break them down, then every little kindness from you is a sip of water in the desert.

It's not the pain that's torture. It's the kindness, because that begets hope, so when you crush that hope later, the despair actually eats into their soul until there's nothing left of them.

That's when it's not fun anymore.

I usually give up long before that point is reached. It gets boring after a while because you can't toy with somebody's who's dead behind their eyes.

"I want you to put your hand on my heart, Bella," I said, "as mine is on yours. Can you do this thing, Bella?" I asked.

She looked at me cautiously. "Yes," she said carefully, a trapped animal, looking for some hidden trick.

I nodded once.

She lifted her hand carefully and put it on my breast, resting it there, lightly.

She sat thus for a few seconds, me looking deeply into her eyes.

Soon her eyes filled with confusion and wonder, and she looked down at my chest.

She couldn't put her hand on my heart, because my heart stopped beating more than three hundred years ago.

"But ..." she said.

"Bella," I said. She looked back up at me still befuddled.

"I want you, now," I said, "not to move, not to breathe, not even to _think. _Can you do that?"

She blinked twice rapidly, then nodded, still very confused.

I took my hand from off her chest and grabbed her hair at the base of her neck by its roots, right where the scrunchy had fallen away from her jogger's pony tail. I pulled her whole body close to mine, by the scruff of her neck, then tilted her head back firmly.

I looked down into her eyes, her mouth agape. "Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't _think."_ I ordered.

She swallowed convulsively.

I leaned in and licked the cum and blood from her cheek.

She gasped loudly in shock.

Luckily for her, I expected that disobedience, otherwise I would have instinctively bitten half her face off.

Still, the blood going in, and her scent all over her face, coming out of her pores...

It was all I could do to remain calm and in control, and not to feed and feed and feed as I wanted to, as my whole body demanded to.

_"Sh! Sh! Sh, Bella!" _I whispered and resumed licking her face, licking up the dirt and blood and cum.

Bella was breathing hard, like a bellows heating the fire hot enough to melt steel, and still I licked her, all over her face, avoiding her eyeballs, but covering most of the rest of her face with my venom.

I took my time. By the end of it, Bella was a leaf shaking in a stiff breeze.

I pulled her away from me slowly, and looked into her eyes.

"You stink less now," I stated.

She looked back at me, confused and scared.

I stood.

"Stand up," I ordered.

She stood, careful near me.

"You got cum all over your top, Bella," I said.

She looked back at me. She didn't look down to check.

"Take it off," I ordered.

The blush slowly covered her cheeks and went down to her neck.

She looked at me for confirmation. I looked right back.

The conversation people have without words. You could fill volumes with these silent exchanges, like, for example: her, _'you can't be serious, can you?'_ to my, _'oh, yeah, honey: dead serious!'_

She bit her lip, crossed her arms over her tee and slowly pulled it up and over her head. Looking away, ashamed, she threw the shirt to one side.

I was still, not emoting a thing. Of course she was wearing a tube bra.

"Bella," I said, "cum's seeped through to your bra, hasn't it?"

It wasn't a question.

She looked back at me pleadingly.

I flicked with my fingers a casting-off motion.

She turned away and pulled her bra off, then, head down, hands crossed over her chest, she turned back to face me.

Her hair hid her face and most of her chest. Her hands hid the most important bits.

"I thought you ..." I shrugged, "modern girls were shameless, Bella."

She shrugged angrily, not budging an inch.

"The sooner you obey me and give me what I want, each and every time I want something, the easier it will be on you, Bella, really." I said.

She kicked listlessly at the dirt with her rubber shoe.

"You do know what I want, don't you, Bella?" I said.

"yes," she in a so small whisper that the air, not moving, no wind, made more sound.

"Bella," I said.

I waited.

She didn't move, she didn't look up.

"Killing people, just to get to you," I said incidentally, "It's really, really dirty work, them bleeding and pissing and shitting all over me. Fucking people. Pigs are cleaner."

I waited.

"I look and feel like shit," I added.

She kicked a bit more at the earth.

I grinned.

I was killing her, bit by bit, and her putting this off only made it worse, so instead of torturing her, forcing her to do my will, I instead tortured her by letting her _not_ do my will, prolonging the agony for her, and building the dread anticipation to bursting.

"Bella," I said finally, "come here."

She shuddered, but came.

Well, not came, but ...

Oh, by Jove, was I going to love playing with her mind and body and spirit!

"Get these clothes off me," I said softly.

Bella sighed more loudly than my words. She simply simpered before she looked to me, and then...

_Ta-dah!_

... her hands came away from her blushing little breasts, the nipples hardened with her shame and my attention.

I looked.

Bella moved her hands toward my shirt.

I grabbed her wrists, then putting them together in my left hand, I put my right hand on her breast.

She drew in a terrified breath and looked at me with wide eyes.

I smirked at her and held here there.

"Each heartbeat, Bella," I said.

She looked away. "Okay," she said.

I shook my head angrily. "Not 'okay,' Bella. _Each heartbeat,_ understand?"

She nodded, ashamed. "Yes," she whispered.

"'Thank you' would have pleased me much more," I remarked.

I glared.

"Thank you," she said sadly, obediently.

"Yeah, too late, kiddo," I said, my voice filled with false sympathy. "Now, get these rags off me, please," I said.

I didn't remove my hand from her breast. I really, really, _really_ liked feeling her little heart go _pitter-patter_ against my hand, and her tiny breast was just barely less than a hand-full.

I haven't teased her about this yet. Probably nothing I could say, that my own body already said for me, could hurt her as much as what she said about herself already.

When James first saw full-figured me. Let's just say I had to close his mouth for him. Long, long after he took my body for granted, I still remember that initial compliment: his shocked look. I still remember that, and it still pleases me and makes me feel warm and, well, if not loved, then admired, and that's nearly close enough.

Just as I was admiring this little girl, literally in the palm of my hand, her body felt my eyes drinking her in, and her heart rate kept going up and up.

She bit at her lower lip, and pulled ineffectually at the front of my bedraggled shirt. I didn't help her at all, I just let her work at it until she realized she had to step into my stance and lift the shirt from the back.

She looked away, blushing. "C-can I ..." she said.

I nodded.

She stepped in and pulled the up the back of my shirt. I grasped my long, long, rust-red curls in my left hand, pulling the tangles out of the way and leaned forward as she pulled my shirt over my head.

I was not wearing a bra. Stone does not need support. You ever see those Greek statues have the problem of sag?

Be jealous. Be very jealous.

Bella pulled my shirt over my head and slid it down my arm toward her chest. I straightened up and shook out my hair.

She looked at my shirt, then looked up at me, trying not to look at my chest.

"Uh," she breathed out. "Um, can you ... move your hand?"

"I don't want to."

The most amazing thing: a little girl's voice came out of my mouth.

The most amazing thing: I had just spoken The Truth.

A vampire is a liar, and a liar of lies. She never says anything truthful, much less ever comes near to The Truth.

I had just spoken The Truth.

And my little voice was going absolutely bat-shit crazy with recriminations, lies, screaming and shouting to back me away from this Truth, this moment.

I told her to shut the fuck up, which she didn't (she pouts sullenly _very loudly_ in my mind), and just looked into this girl's eyes, changing my expression not one iota, giving absolutely nothing away.

But the look in her eyes...

"Oh," she said, then: "oh."

She blinked rapidly, almost hyperventilating, suddenly now, _very embarrassed_ at our close proximity, which is exactly what I wanted before.

And it was exactly what I wanted now.

Do you know how a vampire is a liar? and a liar of lies?

"Oh," she said again, blushing hard now, then: "uh..."

She blinked rapidly. "Um, but you wanted me to take off my ... I mean, you wanted me to take off _your_ shirt," she corrected herself quickly, blushing at the slip.

"Did you say you wanted me?" I asked.

"Oh, my God," she whispered, rooted to the spot with my cobra eyes. I could eat her up right now, and the fact was, I was afraid of doing exactly that. I was treading water, but I didn't know what metaphorical water I was in, perhaps it was hot, like her, nearly ready to self-combust from embarrassment, or it was shark-infested, but I was supposed to be the shark, you see.

The corner of my lip fell upward into a lop-sided grin. Always I was so powerfully over her, that even in my weakest, she was so much under my spell. I could be caught in this moment, my hand attached to her breast as, eye-to-eye, me looking down at her just a bit, our souls kissing, but I could still manipulate her and dominate her utterly and completely.

And the thing was, now she was letting me. She was giving into her embarrassment. She was giving into her fear.

She was giving in.

She was blinking rapidly, and her eyes were moistening as I felt her body trembling through my hand. "Are you ..." she whispered, "Are you a ... a ... lesbian? I mean ..." she added quickly.

"Are you?" before she could further prolong her embarrassment.

"No!" she said, not being able to tear her eyes away from me. "No! I love ... Alan. I'm not ... like that. At all. I'm ..."

"Then you should be safe, shouldn't you?" I said.

Suddenly, I was sad and tired, and I felt like removing my hand.

But I didn't.

If I did, it would be purely from my own weakness, and then the game would be up.

Bella looked, almost with pity, into my eyes.

"Is ..." she said tentatively. "Is Bella a ..." she looked away quickly.

"A what?" I demanded.

Bella shook her head quickly.

"A lesbian? No," I said. "No, she's not."

Bella looked back at me quickly, her eyes probing and finding things that weren't there.

"And she hurt you," she said. "She broke your heart," she said.

Maybe finding things that were there.

"Yes," I said, and it came out like gall: bitter, a snake spitting venom.

It came out like a truth. Because it was.

Just not the way she was realizing it.

"Oh," she said, her eyes widening. "o.."

I stepped into her stance and wrapped my arm around her back, an iron bar holding her into place; my right hand never leaving the warmth of her rapidly-beating little heart.

"Bella," I said, looking directly into her eyes: "You broke my heart."

She blinked quickly, then said: "I'm sorry," from the bottom of her heart.

Like she got it. Like she understood.

And that hurt. She had no idea what she was saying. She had no conception of what she had done to me, but here she was apologizing to me as if she knew, and as if somehow it would make me feel better, ...

When I never, ever would.

And I can't even cry for the release it would give me. A vampire emits no fluids, except venom, so all I could do was to keep this grief bottled within me forever and have the agony eat away at my soul and my sanity.

"Bella," I said to her, "You

broke

my

heart!"

Trying, with all my might to break through to her, into her, so she could see that all that was left of me was this agony and fear and pain and sorrow.

She gasped and two tears fell out of her eyes. She sniffled loudly, snot dewing her nostrils.

"I'm sorry," she said sorrowfully.

"Do you think that's all it takes to make it better?" I demanded harshly.

"No," she said softly.

"Then what does, besides oblivion, Bella?" I demanded, really wanting to know now.

_Why are you asking a HUMAN!_ the little voice in me screamed.

"I don't know," Bella said at the same time.

I looked down at her, angry, furious, too damn proud to say I didn't know, either.

James was gone, and I had nothing left.

I could just, very gently, _push_ my hand through this girl's chest, and let her know exactly how a broken heart felt, and I was furious enough to do that right now. Fuck the play, just do her now and go right through that coven in Washington State and then rip the real Bella Swan's heart right out of her chest so that there'd be not enough venom in the world to save her.

"Then," I demanded harshly, "what fucking good are you, Bella! Tell me!"

God! I was so angry!

She blinked, taking in my anger, my rage and just ... taking it like the little fuck that she was.

"I'm not. I'm a little shit," she said, looking up at me with big doe eyes filled with sincerity and wonder.

Wait.

I paused, and replayed the words she had just said in my head, over and over again, incredulously looking at them from all angles.

It was like a bucket of ice over the head. It was like a slap to the face.

I looked down at her and shook my head with wonder.

It was like I was waking up from a dream. It was like I was being pulled out of my own misery.

_"Heh," _I chuckled softly.

And then I started snickering. "Ha, ha-haha!" I giggled. "You," I laughed. "You little shit, you. Bella! You ..."

I shook my head.

I was at a loss for words.

She blinked up at me, and smiled a tight, little proud smile, just so pleased with herself, that she had said just the right thing that made all the difference to me exactly when I needed it.

I smiled down at her. "Bella," I said.

She looked up at me with full of innocent wonder.

"You little shit," I said proudly, smiling down at her.

She blushed, and glowed with pride.

* * *

**A/N: **Yes, 'Bella' (and how long will this pretense last?) is glowing with pride. She has single-handedly caused a vampire to change course, to open up, just a crack, and to admit something.

And she doesn't even know Victoria is a vampire. She doesn't even know her name. Yet.

But is it with pride she's glowing for single-handedly doing what twelve, no: thir_teen_ people couldn't? Mostly yes.

Mostly.


	6. Peach

One thing that Bella did verify, first-hand: the carpet does match the drapes. I can't say the same for her, though: little kitteh is as smooth as the day she was born with it ... hm. I wonder what she tastes like? Peach? I have a hankering for a sweet little peach right now. Females do taste sweeter, you know. Okay, I'm drooling. I'll stop now, otherwise I won't stop myself ... later.

* * *

"Do you think this changes anything at all, Bella?" I demanded softly into her hair.

I was holding her in my arms, and I was breathing in her essence through her hair. Shit, cum, sweat pouring out her pores, and I could still smell her. In fact, the sweat made her smell more like her.

And I liked this smell, very much. I'd have to be careful not to make a mistake and kill her too soon or by accident.

"Umm, ..." she said softly into my shoulder, "yes?"

She tried to disengage to look at me with her big, doe eyes.

I didn't let her go.

I've found Bella secret weapon, I think. How would seven vampires fall under a single human spell? And it wasn't because one of them decided to make her his mate and the others went along. You could see it in them all (except the blond one, who had an intense hate of the girl ... jealous much, blond girl?): they _loved_ her and cherished her, and there was no reason that I could see why? She was stupid, she was silent, she was clumsy, moreso than most humans: a useless waste of flesh, suitable only for drinking, as all humans were, but her moreso, even, because she smelled so incredibly delicious!

How could they all fall under her spell. Was she a witch? Probably. In my day, they'd burn her at the stake, no doubt.

No, little Bella Swan as a master manipulator. So good, in fact, she wasn't even aware she was doing it herself. Maybe it was a talent she had. The Italians had many talented vampires, and they got it by culling coven that came from turned humans with very special abilities. Maybe this one had such a talent.

No maybe about it. Seven vampires in her thrall? She did. And it was through her big, big eyes that she controlled them all. She gave them that helpless waif-look, and they all fell right in line, risking their very existences to protect hers.

Of all the ... _stupid ..._ things in the world, I had just seen the stupidest: vampires _protecting_ a human. Even that spiteful one, so beautiful, so ugly in her scorn, even she lined right up in front of that human, and _why?_

Maybe this one was more like Bella Swan than was possible? Maybe they were kin of the soul?

I wasn't going to look into her eyes to see if she could enthrall me. I wasn't that curious. And I had already felt the effect, just a taste of it, and she wasn't even trying, was she? She just turned it on, and my heart just ... _turned._

Curiosity killed the vampire, and we don't have nine lives to fuck around. You make one mistake of pride or curiosity, and your gone. Just like that.

Just like James. A mighty vampire who could protect me against other covens, and he made the mistake that he just had to have her, even he, _even James,_ fell under her spell, and it destroyed him.

Part of my practice with this girl here was how to get at Bella Swan without her getting at ... me.

I chuckled softly into her hair.

"What if, Bella," I said to this girl who was not Bella Swan, but who was so Bella Swan that the line was blurring and unblurring for me. I said to her, "What if this is all part of the game, that I let you in, just a bit, let you see that which is me, inside, so I draw you further into my web? Have you consider that? What if I'm playing you again, Bella?"

Bella was quiet for a moment.

"What if," she countered, and then struggled helpless against my enclosing arms, trying to pull back. "Urrrgh! Lemme go!" she snarled.

I chuckled again.

But I was warring within myself: let her go, so she can speak to me, eye-to-eye, as an equal, or ...

Why was I even considering this?

The spell.

"Nope," I said easily, teasingly, hiding my own internal war that I had just won. But I let her know what she knew. She knew the score: I called all the shots, and there was nothing she could do about it.

So as long as I was calling the shots, it was all good.

"Ahh!" She growled. She couldn't pull her head away, so she tried to put just a little gap between her body and mine. Was she uncomfortable having her naked body pressed against mine in this nice, little embrace?

Did I care for her comfort?

I slid my hand down from her back and grabbed one of her cinnamon buns and squeezed it.

She squealed and rammed her hips against mine.

I smiled, my squeezing hand caused the desired effect. I pressed my hand into her cheek, binding her closely to me.

'Binding,' but not at all like, 'mated.' No, that would never be again.

I was Victorious, but I was sad, reflecting in my victory, my complete dominance over this girl, but how that dominance reflect my utter and complete loss.

Always.

Bella sighed angrily into my shoulder, admitting physical defeat, but I felt her little mind working, not admitting complete surrender.

That would come later. But not now. The gall is all the more bitter, the slower it is poured out.

Bella panted a few breaths, the struggle had wearied her body, and not winning it had wearied her soul.

But she was such a good little fighter, and I was the ultimate opponent.

"What if," she demanded angrily, but still in my embrace, "this really has changed everything, and you're just scared that it has?" she asked bravely.

I snickered lightly into her hair. She was _such_ a good, little fighter.

Time to plant a seed of hope for her: it'd keep her going.

"Well," I said easily, "we shall see, shan't we?"

And I let her go.

She stumbled back a step, her body fighting against an embrace that was no longer there.

I stood there, a stone, immovable. I loved that even her body lost to mine, every time. Bella was such a good, little, obedient fuck, ... even in her struggles.

She glared at me, acknowledging her complete inferiority to me in her defiance.

"Yes, we shall!" she fumed. Then paused. "I mean, 'will.' Yes, we _will_."

I snickered.

You know how another person is becoming like you?

They start to talk like you. They copy your mannerisms.

Little Bella was starting to relearn the English language from me, properly this time, though.

And she hated that. That even though she was trying to be distinct from me, she was still overwhelmed by my very presence that she couldn't help but submit to it.

"Yes," I said easily, recording my notice, another point for me, but letting it pass.

I didn't need to rub it in her face, my easy wins. Only somebody who needed to prove something needed to do that. Like little defiant her, to me.

I smirked.

"But, Bella," I said. "I told you to get these rags off me." I looked down at my tattered jeans. "These rags aren't off me."

She blushed.

"Finish what you've started," I commanded.

That's the problem with modern people. They start things, then leave them undone, incomplete. They marry, then divorce. They start 'work,' whatsoever that is these days, because I don't know what people call 'work' when they all pile into offices and sit at a desk all day, but they accomplish nothing with it. The British Empire was won by the Royal Navy, yes, but it was _built_ by the mercantile classes, and that's what had separated us from every other reign before it. The Spanish empire collapsed when they could not find any more gold. The Roman Empire rotted within. The Rule Britannia would reign forever ... but then they became a coddling socialist proxy, licking their wounds when the colonies fought back, and somehow, mysteriously, won!

Then the Americas flourished, but how? By animal husbandry and farming, by manufacture and expansion ...

But look at this country now. Faux religions, no religions, and productivity of the American is non-existent: they're either office workers, or servants serving their masters named McDonalds or Starbucks. Americans created wealth with their all-mighty Dollar, and now they were slaves to their creation.

Because why? They did nothing: they started endeavours but never completed anything now, because it was 'too hard,' so instead of pressing on until the end, like they used to, like they learned from their British founders, they now just simply quit, leaving this mess to start a new one.

Me? I _always_ finished what I started. I always cleaned up the messes I created. You _have_ to be tidy as a vampire, or else you'll self-destruct within a year, your fellow vampires taking you out to cover over the messes you've left behind.

Before the Italians notice, and come, and wipe you all out.

To be a vampire is to live in constant fear. You have all the power in the world, but you must never misuse it, you must never show yourself in all your glory. Once you're exposed, you're done for.

That's why I've had so much fun playing with this little one. I've never gotten to be so open with prey, just in, out, quick kill, hide the evidence, and I'm done.

Like Alan QuickDraw, the one-shot wonder, I was one, then done.

But this little one, I finally got to play with her, and I felt like a kitten again, playing with a little mouse I found in the field.

Bella dithered as I reflected. I noted her dithering.

I stepped into her space, and put her hands to my jeans, bending down to her ear. "These jeans aren't going to strip themselves off me themselves, you know," I purred.

If my explanation were meant to help, then it did wonders...

... for her blush.

"Um, ..." she said.

I drank in her eyes as I manipulated her little hands, fumbling in her embarrassment, and as I drank her in, I felt it, her eyes, the power of them, affecting me.

I'd have to watch that.

I saw, too, however, how my eyes affected her.

Like a cobra, rooting a little bird to the ground, so it could not even think to fly away.

She got the button undone, gulping, looking into my eyes, then her brow furrowed with concentration, looking down at my waist. She tugged, ineffectually, at my jeans trying to pull them over my hips.

I put my hands to hers again, and shoved down.

"Sorry," she mumbled, "it's like they're painted on."

"Uh, huh," I said easily.

Clothes last how long, running full-tilt, not on the high-ways and by-ways, but through forest and thicket?

Not all that long, not even denim blue jeans, made to last. They don't last as long as me, not even close.

So where did I get my clothes? From the Gap, my size, fitted to me?

No, I got it from whomever I just killed, guy or girl, I put on what they were wearing, if I were lucky, what they were packing, and beggars couldn't be choosers, so I put on me whatever size they were, not whatever size I was.

These jeans from a teenaged girl running away from home, a skinny little thing, barely enough blood for the effort, they were painted on me. I had done that girl a favor, sad little thing: she wasn't sad anymore. And now her jeans from Oregon State? They were done, too. Just like her. I sure the girl had a name. They all do, don't they?

They all have their story, unfinished in their unfinished lives at their unfinished school or on their unfinished jobs. I do them a service, and finally finish something for them, for the first time in their lives.

They should thank me.

My shove yanked the jeans over my hips, tearing them as they came off, and they fell off me, grateful to be free from hugging my hips this whole time. I kicked them away from me, done with them, and looked at my Bella.

Bella's eyes were round. She had just got an eyeful of my bush.

"Something catch your eye?" I so oozed interest.

"Oh!" she gulped. "Um."

I snorted. "Yeah," I said. "As you can see, I've left the carpet. It matches the drapes, don't you think?"

"Uh," she said helpfully.

I snickered again, but this time with a bit of pity for her. Three hundred years strips away the nonessential things like modesty and replaces these silly things said and not said in conversations with the point of it all.

_'I wanna fuck, what do you say?'_

Or: _'I'm hungry; let's hunt.'_

Or: _'I want to talk; can we talk?' 'No.' 'Well, fuck you, too, James.' 'We can fuck later, Vickers, I'm busy tracking this Swan-snack.'_

I hated that nickname. That's why James was so casual teasing me about it.

But what I wanted to talk about with James was that maybe, just maybe we could let this one go?

But he wouldn't hear anything of it. He hadn't had this much fun in a while, gaming seven vampires to get to their target. No way was he giving this up. Not for anything. Not even for his continued existence. For James, it was worth it, this game. All or nothing.

He had so much fun, even to the very end.

"So," I offered, "ya gonna do something down there besides look?"

I put one hand on my hip and one over my cunny and rotated my hips forward.

Ladies and ladies (you 'gentlemen' can look away, if you are truly gentlemen: I've met none so far), it has been over a _year_, okay? Over a _year_ since I've seen any action down there. Bella was right there, and was so not interested in starting something, just like James hadn't been, for a good, long while now.

We were an old mated couple. You know the joke: "So, my parents were doing the 'married-thing' ..." the joke starts, and a quipped answer is: "What? Fighting?"

James and I had snipped at each other and fought on occasion, sometimes pretend-playfully, and sometimes just really fighting, screaming, snarling and tearing up whatever scenery was in the way between us ... but a good, hard fuck?

A girl has needs, but James wasn't interested in that. Not for the past year, and ...

And Bella was absolutely terrorized, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what I wanted her to do.

Which was nothing, of course. I was just playin' her.

I lifted her up by the shoulders, and gazed into her eyes.

Then I sniffed with an air of superiority.

"Bella," I snorted, "you just don't know what to do with yourself around me, do you?"

She bit her lip, almost shyly, but then she got an angry look: "I fight you, you throw me around like a rag-doll; and now, you laugh at me for not taking the initiative?"

She glared.

I smirked. "No rules, Bella, remember?" Then I paused thoughtfully. "And ... 'take the initiative ...'?"

I let those words hover in the air between us suggestively.

"Oh, my God!" Bella exclaimed and looked away, blushing. She muttered: "You _know_ what I meant!"

I looked at the righteous, naked girl in my arms.

I knew what she meant. I just wondered that she didn't.

Humans are so blind to everything, particularly themselves, and their embarrassment doesn't cover things over, it only exposes them more.

"Uh, huh," I said easily. "All I know is I'm naked now, as you are, and there you were, right there, and ..."

"Oh, my God!" Bella exclaimed, shocked.

I snickered. "You do have to admit, though, sweetie," I said reasonably, "it is a liberating feeling, isn't it, not to be bound by the strictures of clothes, don't you think?"

She wasn't having fun at all, and was now starting to sulk. "No, I don't," she mumbled under her breath.

"Awww!" I cooed unsympathetically. But I was a mite peeved.

I wanted to play. Couldn't she play along, just a bit, too? She didn't have to be a big baby about it, right? I mean, sure, and I killed her whatever they call these companions these days: 'Boyfriend'? That sounds so mature for both of them. You're how old and you have a 'boyfriend'?

Some of these moderners have no pretense and simply refer to each other as 'fuck buddy.'

'Wanna fuck?' 'Sure.'

or: 'Nah, not tonight.' 'Cool, so ya wanna just hang?' 'Sure, sounds cool.'

So 'cool' with their relationships.

Bella didn't seem to be all that cool with things. Which was funny sometimes to poke fun at.

Sometimes.

I gazed at her withdrawn face, my own mood souring. I suppose I could beat the sullen out of her, but ...

"Get your toilet..tries ..." I said. Then I translated into the modern for her sake, "your shower things, huh?"

I put her down and pushed her gently toward her tent. She skipped two, three, steps in that direction, then stopped and turned back toward me.

I looked at her, surprised. "What?" I demanded.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"What?"

"Uh," she said, "thank you for letting me take a shower. I really feel like sh-..." she stopped herself. "Just, I mean ... thank you, um ..."

She looked helplessly at me. "Uh, what's your name?"

This was just ...

I wasn't supposed to be surprised by anything. I was supposed to be scrying into her psyche and discerning her character, so I could tear her down, bit by bit.

But here she was, surprising me. Asking me for my name.

I drew myself taller. Naturally assuming the dominate position, but wondering how to respond.

_'You'll have to earn that'_? And how precisely would she do that, ever?

Or this doozy: _'To you, I'm God!'_

Now, _that_ one wouldn't have me sniggering as I was saying it! Over the top? How did people express themselves around obvious hyperbole? _'Whey!'_ Why did they concern themselves with bi-product from cheese-production? Do people even know what 'curds and whey' are anymore? Or do they just say it, unknowingly, as they say most things today?

I frowned. I suppose now was the time. After all, her calling out _'Hey, you!'_ to me whenever she needed something from me was entirely unacceptable.

I drew myself up, and cast a regal look down at her. "Victoria Sutherland," I said proudly, and added: "Know my name, and fear!"

I liked that touch.

Bella blinked. "Oh," she said. "Okay ..."

She pressed her trembling lips together firmly.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Something funny?" I demanded harshly.

"No!" Bella said. "Not at all!" she added.

But it was not fear in her eyes that I saw, but just a touch of merriment.

This was not the desired effect. My dander was up!

"Well," I barked angrily, "out with it! Do not think you can toy with me!"

"Nono!" she exclaimed seriously ... as she could muster that is. "I mean, yes, you are ... well, a total badass, and scary as hell and ... and all that." She said.

"But." I snarled. I had no patience for this shit. Nor what she wasn't saying. She'd better spill her guts, or ... I'd spill them for her.

I grinned evilly at the thought.

"That," she sniggered. "You have this high, wispy voice that just ..."

She shrugged. "It's just so not badass, so when you're like, 'I'm so badass, fear me,' but you say it in this little girl's voice ... it's kinda funny, actually."

"'Funny,' huh?" I said, displeased, and I glared at her.

She bit her lip. "Sorry?" she offered weakly.

My lips twisted up into a sardonic grin, and I glided right up to her.

"'Sorry,' huh?" I purred.

Bella stuck out her tongue a bit. I saw she did that, reflexively, when she was embarrassed. "Shouldn't have said that," she scolded herself in a whisper.

"Mm-hm," was my imperial agreement.

_'Little girl's voice,' indeed!_

I had put her right back in her place, just with my easy agreement and my very presence, blotting out hers with mine.

The world was as it should be, 'little girl's voice'-comment notwithstanding.

"Bella," I said, purring inside at how easy it all was to dominate every situation.

"Yes?" she quavered. I smirked and put my hands, lightly, on her shoulders. "You are going to be taking this shower, then, for the rest of the day, you're mine, and I am going to work you hard, possibly even to death, so I am going to need your full attention if you have a shot at all of making it through the day, so ..."

I looked over at her appraisingly. "Well," I said.

My 'well's were very different than Bella's, you notice that?

_Little girl's voice, notwithstanding, _my inner voice treacherously added.

My inner ... _little girl's ..._ voice.

I can't tell you how pissed off that this little girl managed to zing me using my own voice against me. Bad form, that. Maybe I'll have to ... _educate_ her about that later.

'Maybe.'

I continued: "You've been through a lot of stress today, and it's just morning, so, before you shower, go to your tent, and masturbate."

"Uh, what?" she said, totally thrown off balance.

I smirked. "You are so fucked up in the head right now. Take this time, knock off this head of steam you've got built up, and get your head screwed back on straight, and right now, because, my little honeypot, you're going to need every bit of your wits if your going to even think about doing what I want you to do, much less take me on, and that's your plan, isn't it?"

Bella blinked at me helplessly. "Uh ... what?" she repeated helplessly.

"Off you go," I said, pushing her away toward her tent. "Take care of your little personal neediness and come out after you've, ..." my grin turned teasing and cruel, "... recovered, huh?"

"Uh ..." Bella gasped, but she didn't know what to say, so she basically staggered and ran toward her tent, her sweet, little ass squeezed so tight, sensing my gaze that I feared she might actually pull something back there.

Eh. Isometrics are good for muscle tone, I hear.

I watched her race to her tent, she looked back, involuntarily, but seeing me watching her, she jerked her head away and basically threw herself into her tent.

I think she peed herself a little bit when she her my mocking laughter.

I couldn't _wait_ for her to come. Come back out from her tent, that is. I was so looking forward to playing with this one _more!_

Maybe.

Hm.

Maybe I could play with her a bit now? You know: help her relaxzzz a bit?

Nah! My presence in her little tent would be the opposite of relaxing for her, I think. Besides, she was thinking of me already. She could do nothing else.

I have that effect on people ... just before they die.

* * *

**A/N:** It was very ... _'nice' ..._ of Victoria to give 'Bella' this special alone time for her to recollect her 'wits.' Yeah: ... 'nice' of her. Yeah.


	7. Hands

Ah, ha! Ha, ha! You know, it's funny how Bella thinks she can just disobey me and pretend to think I wouldn't notice? It's really ... funny.

* * *

I.

Am.

_Pissed._

I have a question for you: can you tell that I'm pissed? Just wondering.

"I-is everything okay, ... Victoria?" Little Bella had the _gall_ to ask me.

I put a tight, tight smile on my face, and waved her toward the showers. "Top drawer," I said, if not chipperly, then at least brightly.

Bella looked to the shower stall then looked back at me in confusion. "There's nothing on the ..."

Bella looked at me in askance: "... there's nothing on the top shelf in the shower, Victoria, it's ..."

I glared at her. "It's an idiom," I explained tightly. "It means everything is going swimmingly, do you understand me?" I asked coolly.

Outside I was as cool as a cucumber, another idiom, but inside I was seething. And Bella could tell.

"Y-yes," she said.

"Well, then," I barked, "hop to it!" I hoped she understood that idiom, the dumb little shit.

She skittered to the shower stall, crabwise. She understood.

_Stupid little shit!_ I seethed inside. _Fucking disobey me? And then ask me if everything's okay?_

I glared at the girl as she disrobed. No, I hadn't said she could wear a bathrobe. No, I wasn't pissed about that ...

I wasn't pissed about anything at all. Not a damn thing. I tell her to masturbate, and it's not like I said, _'oh, if you feel like it, but whatever you want to do, ...'_

No. I was granting her a God-damn favor, and she turns from it and ignores my direct order because she thinks she's some kind of ...

_Ooh!_ I was going to punish this little bitch but good! Disobey me? Just because she felt like she could? Like she thought she could get away with _shit? and right under my nose? Who the FUCK did she think she was!_

Little fucker was going to have it coming to her but good.

I glared through placid eyes as Bella hopped into the shower and started to close the curtain, but a short shake of my head killed that idea aborning.

She started the water, looking at me furtively.

But how to do it? That's the thing. I could tear her insides out, but what would she learn from that? And how ...

My thoughts were rudely interrupted.

_"Bella!" _I exclaimed, shocked, _"what the HELL are you doing?"_

I tried to modulate my voice. We were inside, and I didn't want to shatter the strategically-placed glass bricks that let light filter in but did not let 'the view' filter out ... if you know what I mean.

I mostly succeeded. But it scared the shit out of Bella. Not literally, though, like I did with Alan, but near enough. She dropped the plastic bottle of some petroleum product onto the stall floor and looked at me, terrified.

"I'm shampooing my hair!" she responded, equally shocked as I.

"You're _what?"_ I demanded, nearly screeching.

Shampoo...? Champu...? Was the word Indian in origin? Something new-age-y? I had no idea. Moderners were always following any wild and weird idea they got into their collective (and empty) heads! What I did know was her head was limned in a lather of petroleum. What next? Was she going to light a match and go out in a blaze of self-immoliated protest?

I didn't wait for an answer. I rushed to her quickly, grasping her head firmly between my hands, then slammed her thus vised against the shower wall to immobilise her, to stop her from hurting herself.

You leave the hurting to me, Bella Swan! No escaping my wraith; no, indeed!

I quickly directed her head under the running water (how it continuously ran, I had no idea; it just did), and the oily lather washed down her hair and face and eyes. Bella flailed about, trying to get free of my hands, but it was useless; there was no way I was going to let her off herself with this chemical concoction she called champu ... shampoo... whatever.

It took a minute or so, and she only made it worse with her struggling and blubbering, but I got the stuff washed off her with the good, pure, clean, cold water.

I slammed her back against the wall, my hand cradling the back of her head, then I grasped a fistful of her hair, keeping her locked into place.

"You want to explain this foolish little stunt?" I demanded.

Bella just looked at me, blinking, wide-eyed and afraid.

I picked up the bottle at her feet, made from petroleum, containing petroleum.

"Why the _hell_ did you put this on your head?" I demanded angrily.

Bella was terrified.

_"Answer me!" _I screamed, losing it a bit.

"It's shampoo!" Bella said piteously.

"It's petroleum!" I shouted back.

"Wha?" Bella said incredulously.

"This," I said, shaking the bottle in her face, "is an oil. What? Were you going to set yourself alight? Was that it? Were you going to ..."

"It's soap," Bella said softly.

"What?" I said, not understanding.

"I was washing my hair! Victoria? Hello? Shampoo? Have you never heard of shampoo?" she looked at me wide-eye, trying to reach through to me.

I looked at the bottle in my hand, and my face hardened. I didn't know what game this human was playing, but I didn't like it one bit.

"This is not soap," I said definitively. "It doesn't smell like it, and ... look at it! It's not black! It's not made of ash! It's this liquid goop that has petroleum in it! The hell, Bella! Do you think I was born yesterday?"

"I..." Bella tried to say something to me, but then she was at a complete loss. "It's ..." she strugged in my hand, "shampoo. It doesn't have petroleum in it ..."

"It _does!" _I snarled. "I can smell it. And you putting it in your hair? The hell, Bella! Seriously!"

Bella drew a ragged breath and shut her eyes for a second. "It's not like it has gas in it. It's ..."

"Of course it's not a gas! It's a liquid! Do you think me a simpleton?" I demanded angrily.

Bella opened her eyes and looked at me, uncomprehendingly. "You've never ...?"

She left the question hanging.

"What?" I demanded harshly.

"You've never washed your hair?" she asked cautiously.

I glared at her.

"Of course I have!" I bit back.

But my little voice asked me: _when?_

And I didn't have an answer for it. I don't remember me washing my hair.

"I mean," Bella said quietly, echoing my own inner voice, "with ... shampoo? ... like? ... and ... you know ... conditioner? ... maybe?"

She looked at me humbly.

"I ..." I said, letting her hair go, she sunk back onto her heels from her tip-toes. "I don't know of what you speak." I said, finally.

Bella bit her lip. Then, tentatively, she reached out her hand toward the bottle.

I glared at her.

"May I?" she said.

She tugged at the bottle in my hand.

I didn't want to let it go. Did I fear a trick?

Or...

Did I fear her, with this bottle in her hand, that I did not know what it was? Did I fear this future where she held something that I did not know? That she knew?

I let the bottle go, begrudgingly.

She pointed at the bottle. "It's shampoo," she said, pointing at the lettering. "See?"

I looked down at her hand underscoring the letters on the bottle. I looked back up at her.

"I'm not blind," I said, perturbed.

"It's for ..." Bella dared. "It's for washing your hair, you know? It makes your hair feel really good: nice, and clean, you know? The conditioner helps, too, you know, to tame the tangles?"

I glared at her.

"Can I show you?" she offered.

My eyes narrowed to slits.

Petroleum. Fire. Split a vampire open, and it's game over. Does she know this?

Didn't matter. I did. Fire on the outside: fine, no problem, just have to watch the hair. But fire going inside ... I glared at her, death bleeding out of my eyes.

She looked, wide-eyed at furious me. "No tricks," she said, "I just ... I'll just wash my own hair, okay? So you can see?" she offered.

"No tricks!" I seethed.

"Nu-uh," she nodded carefully. "No tricks."

"Because if you _think _of trying something, Bella," I fumed, "I will put your head through this fucking wall, you hear me?"

"Yes," she said.

We looked at each other through the rain of the inexhaustible shower-head.

Bella blinked twice at me. "O-okay," she said cautiously. "I'm just gonna ..."

She snapped open the bottle top.

My eyes were lasers, boring into hers.

"See?" she said carefully, "I just pour a bit into my hand, like this, and rub it into my hair and massage my scalp like this?"

She was standing under the shower and layering the oil into her thick hair.

Her hair was alive with it and the water and her hands.

I took a step back and crossed my arms, leaning against the wall, watching her.

She was very thorough, layering it in, and then washing it out.

"Then the conditioner, 'cause," she smiled knowingly at me, "you know, thick hair, right? It helps."

This liquid went on and in and washed out much more quickly, and her hair didn't seem to be changed much by it, that I saw, but it was ... well, maybe it appeared more manageable in her hands.

"See?" she said tentatively, almost encouragingly. "All done. Nothing to it, and it feels really good..." she said looking toward me for approval.

I frowned, giving nothing away. But I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all for some reason. And I didn't know why. And I didn't like that, either, not knowing why.

"See?" she asked, trying for understanding.

I glared. Not wanting to see. Not wanting to admit it.

I was on very dangerous ground. I felt it: the wisp of a memory.

Vampires don't have memories. And when they come, they are very, very bad.

And I don't know what was evoking this one, or what it even was, but I didn't like this one bit.

"O-okay," Bella said. "I'll just wash up now, okay?" she said carefully.

She picked up a wash-cloth and put a bar of white, solidified oil in it, and it lathered right up.

"What's that?" I demanded angrily, pointing at the white brick of petroleum.

"Soap," Bella said carefully. "For washing, ... you know? my body?" she added.

I just glared. I don't know what the hell that thing was, but it wasn't soap. I knew ... I _remembered_ what soap was, and this wasn't soap. Soap stank, and was hard, and didn't froth up into a rich, creamy white lather of bubbles. Soap didn't lather at all. It scraped against flesh, cutting away the caked dirt, and it hurt, and when it cut into you, it stung.

It stung like the devil.

I hated soap.

I glared at her as she applied this thing, this _soap_-lather from her wash-cloth to her body, and like of old, her skin turned pink, glowing, and healthy, like of old, minus the pain, and the wretched stink of soap.

She rinsed off quickly, but I saw her luxuriate in her cleanness under the shower, which she stepped away from wiped down the excess moisture quickly before toweling, then wrapping herself in the towel. The towel formed a perfect wrap around her body, returning to her her modesty, and, now modest, she blushed again under my hard scrutiny.

"W-were you going to shower?" she asked politely.

I glared.

"...too?" She said. "...also?" she added. "I mean, uh ..."

Regally I brushed past her, under the curtain of rain from the shower-head.

I picked up the long bottle of ... shampoo.

But I didn't really know what to do with it. I did what I had observed she did, pouring some into my hand.

The liquid fell right through my fingers down into the drain.

I watched it wash away, then glared up at Bella.

"How does this ..." I said.

I was getting ready to scream, my fury was boiling put from my chest and was ready to burst forth from me, like I was a dam, fit to bursting.

Bella watched my attempt, and saw my failure.

She bit her lip and stuck out her tongue, just a touch. "May I ..." she offered shyly, reaching out her hand toward the bottle in mine.

I looked from her hand to mine, then to her face.

I passed her the bottle.

"Do me," I commanded angrily, just barely biting off the words, keeping the scream inside.

Bella took the bottle from my obdurate hand, coaxing it from my fingers, then poured out some liquid into her own hand.

Somehow, it stayed for her, and she delicately brought her hand to my head, applying the liquid to my scalp.

"Wow," she whispered.

"What?" I said to the empty air in front of me.

"You're hair's like ... really ..." she struggled for words, "coarse, you know? stiff. It's like ..."

She poured more liquid into her hand and applied it to my scalp with more vigor. I looked down at her on tip-toes.

"It'd ..." she said, both hands on my scalp. "It'd kinda help if you leaned over a bit or ..."

I sat, stone on tiled-over concrete.

Some of the tiles broke into splinters underneath my weight as I crushed them with my full weight.

"Or, ..." Bella gasped in surprise. "Or, that, I guess."

I leaned my head forward, ignoring her, because the memory welled up from the floor, and consumed me.

...

Fourteen. I was fourteen. I remember.

_'But I don't wanna bathe!'_ I whined.

_'It's the Spring cleaning,' _the head maid had said, _'and you'll not work at the master's house with out your yearly bath!'_

_'No!' _I cried. _'Please! You get sick when you bathe! I don't wanna die!' _I cried.

_'Don't be a baby!'_ she told me, her name ... her name ... D-something ... I don't remember. She dragged me back behind the big house and stripped me bare, then threw me into the basin.

Everyone else had bathed in the water already. I was the last to bathe, being the lowest in rank. And it was so dirty as it was to be more grey than the basin itself. And, oh! How I kicked and screamed and cried, but into the basin I was stood, then she picked up the ladle, and poured and poured and poured that dirty water over me, until I was clean, scrubbed clean with soap that rasped like sand, then more of the washed water poured over my cut skin again.

I didn't want to bath.

I had replaced the scullery girl for the big house. She had died last year. She caught ill after her bath, and she died, and I was the replacement.

I cried as the head maid rinsed me down with the dirty water in the basin.

...

I opened my eyes.

Bella was looking at me, talking to me, she had soap in the wash-cloth, and she was bringing it to my body.

I grabbed her wrist.

"You touch me, and you die!" I snarled.

Bella said something.

I didn't understand her.

"What?" I said.

She said something again.

I blinked once. I blinked twice more.

Bella said something, looking at my hand, gently holding her wrist.

Oh.

Modern English. She was speaking in modern English. American, actually.

"What did you say?" I said to her.

No. Wait. Modern English: American. I had to speak that now.

I was in the now, now: I wasn't in 1553 any more. I wasn't in London. I was here, in a bathroom/shower room facility that had more conveniences than what the big house would've ever had had.

I tried again. "What did you say, Bella?"

The American words came out funny from my mouth.

Bella blinked, and drew in a ragged breath. "I said," she said carefully, "is it okay if I ... you know ... or did you want to ..."

I let go of her hand. She rubbed her wrist.

Good thing I didn't grip hard: she wouldn't've had a wrist to rub.

"You do it," I said.

I haven't had much luck with this whole modern soap-adventure.

Besides, I rather liked Bella serving me. That's the way her world should work from now on: her, servicing me. I rather liked that she did this, and it even appeared willing.

I rather liked that, quite a bit, her willingness. It helped.

"Okay," she said, and approached me cautiously.

She applied the wash-cloth to my body, and as she washed me, she thought. "You, kinda, ... just went away there for a while ... are you ... sleepy? Have you gotten any rest?" she offered.

"Mm," I said.

I didn't hear a word she said. Oh, I heard her words, but I just didn't care what she was saying. I was breathing in her scent, and luxuriating in the light touch of the wash-cloth as it glided over my body, the soap kissing the stone that is my 'skin' that no longer exists, and then just sloughing off in the rain-water of the shower.

"What language was that you were speaking? Was it German, or Swedish or ...?" she said.

"Are you done?" I demanded.

"Just ..." she said quickly, "just gotta do your back."

The cloth slid over my back, up and down, efficient strokes.

I had been sitting, Indian-style on the floor of the shower stall. I rose, full height, cobra-like over Bella. She looked up at me in awe as the soap just fell off, the water hurrying it down the drain.

"Bella," I said.

"Yes?" she gulped.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're ..."

My hands cradled her head again, and I slammed her bodily against the wall. It groaned.

"Ow?" she said weakly.

"Just who the fuck do you think you're trying to fool?" I said furiously.

"I..." she started helplessly.

_"SHUT...UP!"_ I glared balefully at her.

Her breaths came in short, sharp gasps as she looked at me in terror.

"I fucking ..." I began coolly. "I fucking told you to fucking masturbate, and you fucking think you can waltz right in her without doing what you were told to do, you little disobedient _FUCK?"_

That last bit didn't come out so coolly.

I pulled her off the wall, then slammed her right back against it.

If my hand wasn't cradling the back of her head? That last push would have crushed her skull like a fucking grape.

_"ANSWER ME!"_ I screamed.

"I..." Bella said.

_"SHUT UP!"_ I thundered.

Bella shut her mouth, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"I fucking told you to do this for a fucking reason, Bella, but, no, you think you're too fucking good to do what you're told, because you're too fucking smart for me, huh, is that it, you little fuck?" I snarled.

Another tear fell. Like I fucking cared.

"Fucking ..." I began. "I fucking ... God damn it, Bella. I tell you to do something, you don't do it, which tells _me what?_ It tells me you can't do a fucking thing yourself, can you, Bella, huh? Can you?"

I glared into her eyes.

If I reached in and pulled out her tongue by its roots, Bella _might_ have been more eloquent than she was now, because all she made were whimpering sounds.

My face twisted up into a smirk that had absolutely nothing happy to it.

I lifted her up from the permanent dent I had just made into the concrete, turned her around and bent her over slightly, molding her body between mine and the wall.

My hands were free now.

"What are you ..." Bella gasped. "What are you doing?"

"Bella," I said.

I just shook my head. I thought modern people were supposed to be ... what did they call it? Enlightened. No. That was another century. Later than mine. Liberated. That's it: liberated.

My hand cupped her little breast, and I felt her heart go _pitter-patter, pitter-patter_. And my other hand went down, down, down, over her belly, until it found her cunny.

"Don't ..." Bella gasped.

My hands set to work.

"Bella," I purred, furious and pleased. "You're little pleading voice is going to sing its sweet song to me."

"Please," Bella whispered, her hands pushing against the wall, her head bowed.

"That's it, sweetie," I purred, "Beg for me."

My hands continued their work, cupping her breast, pressing her firmly into my body, and my middle digit had found her slit and was rubbing her outer lips, parting them gently, and easing, oh, so gently beyond and between, finding her softness, and, soon, oh, so soon, the slightest of dew.

It was enough.

I synched my breathing with hers and I began a soft breath of air onto her neck, nuzzling her ear.

"No," she pleaded softly. "No."

I said nothing, breathing with her, rubbing her gently, holding her firmly into me. Her hands pushed against the wall ineffectively. "No," she pleaded, "d-don't."

"Fuck, Bella," I purred, "you're getting wet, sweetie. You gonna cum for me, huh? You gonna cum for me, a nice little cum just for me?"

"Nau-No!" Bella begged, _"please!"_ But her begging had an edge of desperation to it.

Her hands went to mine, one to my hand on her breast, her little heart now just _thrumming_ with need, one hand to my hand on her cunny, bringing her closer and closer to release.

She tugged helplessly at my hands, trying to pull them away.

How long would this struggle last, I wondered? Because this was a struggle she could not win.

Her own body was betraying her now and my middle finger bathed in her want.

"Please," she begged. "Please."

But what was she begging for now? To release her? But how did she wish to be released?

I smiled.

My point.

"Okay," I said easily, lifting her hands to the wall, and I stepped away.

"U...uh?" she cried. "But ..."

Her head fell to the shower wall, _bonk_ing against it lightly.

"Fuck," she whispered to herself. "Oh, you fucking bitch!" she whimpered, forlorn and angry.

"Bella," I whispered.

Then I grabbed her arm, and spun her around quickly, smacking her, hard, against her face.

"Wha-... what?" She exclaimed, shocked and hurt, raising her hand to her cheek.

I smirked. "Your hands," I said, "give them to me."

She looked at me, hurt, her hand on her rose-red cheek.

So I took her hands in mine.

"These hands, Bella," I said. "I told you to do something. I told you to masturbate, but, no, you saw fit not to, didn't you?"

I glared.

"So," I said, "what? Is this a shameful thing? Did you not wish to do bad? Well, Bella, I told you everything good comes from me? Well, everything bad does now, too. From now on, you are not to use these hands anymore for anything other than my service. You are _not_ to masturbate, _ever _again, unless under my express permission, and for the purpose of my pleasure. And don't you, _ever,_ expect or hope for this permission from me, Bella. These hands," I said, raising them slightly.

She looked down, hurt, from my eyes to her hands. I took both of her wrists in one hand, then raised up my other.

"These hands," I said. I smacked her hands, hard.

"Ahhhh!" Bella cried, shocked and hurt.

This was nothing. This was just a light slap.

"They are evil things, Bella," I smacked her hands, hard, again.

"Owwww!" she cried.

"And are to do only and everything _I_ tell them to do from now on, forevermore, do you hear me, Bella?"

I smacked her hands, hard, again.

"Yessss! Pleassssseeee!" Bella cried pitifully.

"Say it, Bella!" I yelled and raised my hand.

"Yes, okay! Ple-..." Then she broke off and screamed as my hand came down on hers.

They were beet red.

"Ohhh! Owwww!" she cried helplessly.

"They do what I say, Bella, and they do not do what I do not say, do you understand me, Bella?" I demanded.

"Yes," Bella whimpered, and seeing me raise my hand again, "Yes, oh, please, oh, God! Yes, I understand! Please, Please! _PLEASE!"_

I brought my hand down, hard, on her hands.

"Ohhh! God! Ohhh! God! Please, please, please!" Bella cried.

"Bella," I said calmly.

"Please," she whimpered, barely being able to stand, leaning against the wall, so she started to sink.

"Bella," I said, and I sank down with her. "I told you to masturbate, you didn't. That was your last disobedience, Bella. Now? You masturbate without my express permission? You even _think_ of yourself, your body, anything, and ..." I glared down over her, "then I'm not going to be nice and gentle, like I was this time, do you hear me?"

"Yes," she cried, sitting on the floor, whimpering, "yes."

I let go of her tiny, little, red hands and sat down beside her and pulled her into me.

"Bella," I said, "put you hands on my shoulders."

She was sobbing softly now, in pain, her whole body wound tight around herself, she more lifted her arms than moved her hands, dead things to her, but I had been very gentle, actually, not breaking a single bone in either hand, she flopped her hands on my shoulders and used her arms more to keep them there, as opposed to holding onto my shoulders by gripping with her hands.

Her hands probably hurt like hell.

She sobbed into my chest as I held her, and then she totally broke down, crying her little heart out now, gripping my shoulders, a little bit, with her little hands. The cold of my shoulders was, paradoxically, seeping a cool balm into her hands aflame with agony.

She cried, and I held her to me, letting her cry it out.

* * *

**A/N:** Yeah. You don't have to guess.

I was ... fourteen I think, and ... my dad found me. And ...

Yeah.

He dragged me out into the hallway, and he held my hands by my wrists, right in front of my mom, and he said.

And he said: "These hands."

And he slapped them. Hard. I don't remember if it were once, now, or several times, but he told me my hands were bad, and did bad things, and ... that ...

Yeah.

And he was so, so ... _angry_ at me and so _disappointed._

Ten years later, I look down at my hands, and they still hurt.

And ... now ... I'm still that bad little girl who ... and ...

Yeah.


	8. Pando

**Chapter summary: **She's a woman; I'm a woman. We're supposed to ... understand ... that. Each other. But she's just like everybody else. Just like James. The trees have been here 10, no: 100 thousand years, and even they laugh at me. Why am I so weak? Why does she have to see my weakness? I. _hate_. her. I hate myself.

* * *

I carried Bella back to her tent. Her arms were around my neck, and she was looking at me the whole time.

Good. Her focus was where it should be.

I set her down in the tent.

"Get dressed, Bella," I ordered. I turned to go.

"Oh," she blinked in surprise.

That gave me pause.

"'Oh'?" I said, turning back to her.

"I just thought ..." she said, then broke off, blushing.

I put my hands on my hips, my arms akimbo, looking her up and down, scorn clear on my face.

"I just thought ..." she said.

Then she stopped again.

I _tsk_ed. "Your first mistake, Bella," I said curtly, "is thinking that you think at all."

Her face went white.

"Let's not waste time with this kind of foolishness any more, huh?" I said, ignoring her affronted look. "Do what I say, and leave the thinking to me," I looked at her appraisingly, but then, disappointed with what I saw, I added: "for it's simply the case that you can't form a complete thought at all, can you?"

I didn't wait for her answer to that. In actually, I hadn't really asked her a question. Not one that I wanted an answer to. I left her tent.

After all, I needed to get dressed, too, and Bella's clothes ...? They'd fit, barely, but I wasn't in the mood for clingy-tight anymore, and I had the run of this campsite. There's be clothes that'd fit me, or at least well enough. Bella's shape was 'elfin,' if I was thinking of a charitable word for 'skinny chick.' But my frame was svelt and proportioned, and not skeletal-starving as what passed for as 'beauty' in this modern era.

In my day people who looked like that were viewed as what they were: either starved or be-plagued and were given a wide berth.

Not that I'm calling Bella 'ugly' by any stretch, but ... how could she bear, birth, and nurse children with her figure? Did she think about that at all as she exercised away her calories?

I quickly scouted out the other tents and found some clothes suitable for me. Jeans and a tee, of course. Durable and commonplace, and that's what I needed.

I had no room for dressing nicely any more, nor for beauty in my life.

At least, that's what I always told myself. That's what James told me, when I indulged in _'silly frivolity,'_ at any rate, so I didn't. Not anymore.

...

I reentered Bella's tent.

"Uh," she stuttered. "Uh, ..."

She was dressed now, blue jeans and a buttoned-up short-sleeve shirt, sitting cross-legged, and chewing on something.

She nearly choked on a mouthful as she swallowed quickly to answer my inquiring look.

"Um," she said, "I, uh, got a granola bar, ... 'cause," she looked carefully at me. "'cause I was hungry."

My silence answered her.

"I hope that's okay ...?" she 'stated.'

Bella 'states' things by asking a question, I observed.

I frowned.

Of course, I hate the word 'okay,' but I didn't like her setting the tempo here, nor did I like her taking the initiative. Every good thing came from me, including, ... what did she call it? ... her granola bar.

"Give me that," I commanded.

Bella bit her lip but handed the food over quickly. I took it from her and sniffed it suspiciously. She put petrol in her hair, what in the world was she eating, I wondered.

It smelled of oats and honey.

"Did you want some?" she offered politely.

My eyes came up from the food, and narrowed on her.

"Um, or ..." she stuttered.

I shook my head and handed her back her food.

"Next time," I commanded, "ask first."

"Uh," she said, taking back the bar, "okay."

That word again. I wondered if I should institute a new rule: a free punch for each time she says that word.

A free punch, _hard_.

I kind of liked that rule.

She wouldn't.

I looked her up and down, then said curtly. "Finish that, then come meet me outside."

I swept out.

As I left I saw her surreptitiously sneak a sip of water from a clear plastic bottle with a blue label with some bold, white lettering on it, washing down the bite of food she had just taken.

It did not escape my notice. She'd pay for that. Later.

...

Bella stood in front of me beside the fire pit.

"Bella," I said, "fetch me a rock."

She blinked. "'Fetch' you a rock?" she asked incredulously.

I back-handed her across the face, hard, sending her a good ten feet across the clearing.

Bella cried out sharply, and lay where she fell, gasping.

I walked up to her and squatted down beside her.

"Lesson one, Bella," I said grimly. "When I tell you something, you obey, instantly. I don't need your confirmation in acknowledgement, because I know what I said. I don't need you, my little shit, to repeat it, you got me?"

Bella's tears formed a little, tiny mud-puddle on the dust by her cheek.

"Oh-okay," she whimpered.

I picked her up by her neck and stood, all in one smooth motion, holding her a good foot above the ground.

"Say that fucking word again, Bella;" I snarled. "I dare you."

She didn't say that word again. Technically, she couldn't say anything at all, as I was strangling her with my hand's vise-like grip around her neck.

Her lips started to purple.

I set her feet back onto the ground, and let go.

She collapsed at my feet onto the ground, panting, nearly sobbing.

I gently turned her over onto her back, so that she was looking up at me.

The world as it should be: me, standing proudly, towering over her, and her, at my feet, cowering and afraid.

Perfection.

"Bella," I commanded softly, "get up, and fetch me a rock. Now."

She took a wheezing gasp, and clambered up, her look, shattered. I regarded her levelly, coolly.

She cast about her, her eyes on the ground, then she wandered a bit, looking about.

Eventually she kicked up a smooth stone from the dirt, and brought it to me. It was dun and smallish. I wanted it to be fist-sized, but this would do.

I held out my hand. "Put it in my hand," I said.

She obeyed, watching me, carefully.

I looked down at the rock, then looked back up into her eyes, and then, ...

I crushed the rock in my hand. I crushed it into sand, watching her eyes the whole time.

Bella looked down at my hand in shock when she heard the grinding sound, seeing the rock being pulverized, then she looked back up at me in askance.

"This, Bella," I said, "is your little hands. I so want to do this to your hands after you disobeyed my command earlier, then you fucking had the gall to ask if everything were 'okay'?"

I glared at her furiously, then, with a quick, snapping motion across my shins, I wiped the dust from hands.

I put my hands out, both of them.

"Bella," I said. "Put your hands in mine."

Bella blanched and swallowed.

"First lesson, Bella," I reminded her grimly.

Bella bit her lip and placed her hands into mine.

They were little things, like mine: my little hands. Her hands were fragile things, unlike mine. There were more than two hundred bones in her tiny hands, each one of them vital for their function, each one that could be so easily crushed into powder.

I looked down at her hands.

Then I looked into her eyes.

She looked back into mine, unflinching.

I liked that, for some reason.

"I so, Bella," I started, "I so want to crush these little disobedient hands," I said.

I looked into her eyes, holding her hands in mine.

"Why don't I?" I demanded of her.

Bella swallowed convulsively, looking back into my eyes.

"'Cause, ..." she bit her lip, then she dared: "'Cause you don't want to ...?"

She paused, as she answered, and her voice instead of answering with certainty, that was in her eyes up to now, ended in a wavering, upward lilt.

I frowned, looking right back at her, then shook my head. "Bella, are you fucking stupid?"

She blanched, then made to answer. "Uh," she said.

"No," I said, cutting her off. "Don't answer that, because you're either going to lie, or ... I have my answer already. I _told_ you I wanted to crush your hands, and you say I won't because I don't want to? You're not _listening_ to me."

I pondered my words, and that only made me angry. She wasn't listening to me!

With my thumbs I turned her hands toward her face as I rotated her arms around, facing into her.

"Ahhh!" She cried in pain, and was forced down to her knees in front of me.

That is: she was either forced to her knees, or, she could have resisted and had her hands snapped off at her wrists. Her choice.

"You tell me right now," I snarled, "why I don't crush these little hands of yours, Bella."

"Because you don't want to, Victoria!" she shouted desperately.

I liked her saying my name. I twisted a bit more, smiling cruelly, reveling in her pain, and she cried out and bend back, trying to ease the pressure on her hands, and taking it all along her spine.

Another set of bones I could easily snap.

"Explain," I commanded, not easing up one bit.

Bella whined in pain, tears sparkling her eyes, but she looked at me, right through her agony. "We b-both know you could do it if you really wanted to, so-so," she gasped, "y-you really don't want to, 'cause ..."

She panted through her pain.

"Because why?" I demanded harshly.

"'Cause I don't know, okay?" she screeched. "I dunno!"

I let her go.

"Owww!" she cried and fell to her back, cradling her arms into her chest.

"Because," I said softly and waited for her whimpers to soften, "it is my pleasure not to. That's why, Bella. You are entirely at my disposal and for my whimsy. You piss me off, and you pay for it, and each and every agonising moment you suffer will be a sumptuous feast for me to savour. And savour it I shall, like a meal: bite by bite."

I looked down at her, pityingly. God, I'd hate to be her. "So it'd be best to do everything I want the instant I want it, because the alternative ..." I paused, smiling down at her, "This is _nothing_ to the alternative. You can't _imagine_ the alternative, you hear me, Bella?"

She sniffled, then she whispered, "Yes," sadly.

I smiled down at her. "Good girl," I said cheerfully. "Now, get up."

She got up, wearily, rubbing her wrists.

I smirked. Then held out my hands again.

Bella blanched.

I looked down at my hands then looked back up into her eyes.

Bella put her hands into mine.

I smiled at her. "Good girl," I cooed warmly.

I let her hands go.

"Listen to me," I said as she put her hands to her chest again, rubbing her wrists.

I glared at her. "Are you listening?'

"Yes," she whispered.

I smiled. "Good."

"You see this mess?" I said, pointing down at Alan's remains.

Bella looked down at what was left of her lover. She swallowed.

"You left him," I stated coolly, anger burning in my eyes.

"He said to ..." Bella began.

_"Shut up!"_ I screamed, losing my equanimity in an instant of hot fury at being interrupted.

Bella flinched back, shocked.

"You never, _never,_ leave your mate," I stated forcefully. "If you loved him, you would have stayed by his side to the very end. You didn't. You abandoned him."

"I couldn't do anything!" she said.

I frowned. "Are you listening to me, Bella?" I demanded.

"Yes," she muttered petulantly.

"Really?" I asked. "Because it sounds to me like you're waiting to answer back to me. It sounds like you're trying to justify yourself, when, clearly, there is no justification for what you did."

I glared at her. "Two are stronger than one. You never, _never, _abandon your mate. _Ever. _You hear me?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"But you did," I said, "You little shit, you did. You put yourself above your lover; you sought your own sur ..."

"I didn't!" she cried.

I stopped and crossed my arms, raising my eyebrow.

"I didn't," she repeated, the full force of her conviction in her voice.

"Bella," I chided.

Bella bit her lip. "Sorry," she whispered, looking away.

"Yes, you are," I agreed with what she said, but probably not in the way she meant her word. "You are one sorry, little shit. So what are you going to do about it?"

Bella's face was white. "I..." and she cleared her throat.

"Speak up, Bella," I barked.

Her tongue came out, its tip touching her upper lip.

That tongue of hers had a life of its own. I wondered if it were a symbiotic entity. To the point: I wondered if she controlled it (she didn't), or it controlled her (the jury was still out on that one).

"I don't know," was her eventual and lame answer.

_Just about what I expected,_ I reflected ruefully. Just so the modern person, they do something, and expect nothing to come from it, and, in particular, they made a mess, and they expected someone else to clean it up.

So that all that followed in the wake of people were messes.

"Exactly," I muttered, but not to her, specifically, but to this stupid World I found myself in, where all I did was kill and kill and kill, but instead of me being destructive, I actually was the one to clean up these messes. I had to. _I_ had to be neat, and these stupid cows were oblivious to everything they did.

Where the fuck was the justice in that? I had near-infinite power, but I had to be careful in my every exercise of it, but these human cattle did whatever they pleased and never took responsibility for anything they did!

I'd be doing the World a favour by wiping the face of the Earth of them all!

My focus returned to her. "Well, I have a little job for you, Bella," I told her. "Every mess I make? I clean up. This time? This mess? Your responsibility. You did Alan a disservice by abandoning hi-..."

"But he said ...!" Bella began.

My hand flashed out, white lightning, and connected with her cheek.

I actually marveled at how thick-skulled she was. You think she'd learn to shut the fuck up, but, no, not Bella. She fought on for her nonexistent dignity, regardless to the drubbing I gave her. She kept standing on her pride.

And I kept knocking her down.

I walked over to her crumpled body. She was rocking herself, moaning softly.

I stood over, just a little bit proud of her.

The stupid little shit.

My heel rested on her shoulder and turned her, easing her over onto her back.

I smirked sympathetically down at her.

"Bella," I said calmly. "I can do this all day and all night." Then I clarified, "I'm actually having _fun_ doing this." I looked down at her. "Are you?"

She was gasping, winded, looking up through eyes blinded by pain to the sky filtered through a canopy of trees that looked back down at her dispassionately.

The trees have been here hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. They would see her come, and see her go. Her sorrow did not affect them. She was not even one ring in their experience. What was she to them? Nothing.

My little Bella was nothing to them. She would come, she would go. That was all.

So I, the only one in her miserable life now, told her. "You'll be _lucky_ to last until the sunset, and when you see the Sun fall... _if_ you see the Sun fall," I clarified, "you'll curse the darkness because you know you'll wake to the morrow of more of this, and worse even still, little Bella, you hear me?"

She surely heard me, even as she might not have comprehended the words through the pain. Her body understood. She moaned and a tear fell.

"So," I said, "it may just fucking help, just a little tiny bit, for you to drop this pretense of fighting me every step of the way and just accept what I'm telling you about you for a change, huh, you little shit?"

Bella sniffled.

I pulled her up to eye level by her shoulders. "Do you still have some fight in you?" I demanded. "I'll be happy to beat it out of you if you do..." I added.

Bella sniffled again and looked away.

I smirked.

She still had fight in her.

That dumb shit.

"Bella," I said, demanding her attention, "what are you?"

Bella bit her lip and whispered sadly, "Imma little shit."

"Was that hard?" I asked sarcastically.

Bella wouldn't look at me.

It was hard for her.

I smirked again.

"You abandoned Alan," I pressed, then I demanded angrily. "Say it."

"I..." Bella whispered, "I abandoned Alan."

Then she hung her head, and sobbed.

"Oh, no, Bella," I tutted. "We're not done yet. We're not _half_ done."

She sniffled and tried to rub her nose.

My arms were in the way. I wasn't on planning on moving them any time soon. Bella gave up her attempt at dignity.

She could learn. I guess.

"You did him a disservice, Bella; say it," I said.

"I did him a disservice," she whispered.

"What?" I demanded.

Bella looked up and glared at me, the fight flaring up in her eyes.

But then it went away, and was replaced by sadness.

"I did him a disservice," she said, just as softly, but now she was really saying it, she wasn't just repeating my words, she was actually taking on what they meant.

"Do you know why you said that, Bella?" I asked.

Bella looked back at me and sniffled.

I nodded to her. "Because it's true," I said. "That's why you said it. That's why it hurts for you to say it. Because it's true."

This was probably the first time in her pointless life she ever faced the truth. This was probably the only time anybody ever made her face the truth squarely.

"So what are you going to do about this, Bella?" I asked again.

She sniffled. "Dunno," she said. "Can't do anything, I guess." She tried to shrug. "Can't undo it. Can't make it right, so ..."

I waved her to silence. "Yes," I said brusquely. I wasn't interested in hearing her litany of 'can't's. I didn't ask for that, anyway. "What would you do if you could do something?"

"Uh," she said, the stupid look on her face telling me what she didn't say: she didn't get it. "Uh, not go on this vacation, I guess, I mean, knowing what..."

I shook my head. "What would you do _now, _Bella. Not what _would_ you have done. Coulda-woulda-shoulda runs your life, and that's why you're fucked _now._ What would you do _now, right now,_ given everything's that happened, given what you're given right now."

Bella blinked at me, helplessly.

She bit her lip. "I dunno," she said finally. "I dunno what you want me to say. I dunno what I'm supposed to do."

I gave her a hard look, frowning. "How old are you?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Twenny-six."

She said _'twenny.'_ Not 'twen_ty.'_

Her enunciation was simply atrocious. And Americans pretend to be so superior to other foreigners because they can speak _'English.'_

Americans spoke _something, _that was for sure: they were always blustering on about something, but what language they spoke? I wouldn't hazard a guess at what to call the travesty of a language they pretended to be speaking.

"Twenty-six," I repeated, disbelieving. But with proper diction, I'd like you to know.

Bella nodded.

Twenty-six. I mulled over that age. Back in my day, a woman twenty-six years old was an old grandmother, ready to die. She ran her household, the farm, the servants, if there were any, her children, four at least still living, her grandchildren, already a few on the way. She planned the meals, the week and the year with a will and determination to get her family through the Winter, or at least most of them, the ones strong enough to survive.

_'I dunno,'_ in my day, anyway, was not part of a woman's vocabulary at the venerable age of six and twenty.

I shook my head. What was before me was not a woman, what was before me was a child.

"What?" Bella demanded defensively. "I mean ..."

"Here's what you will do, Bella," I cut in.

I didn't care what she 'meant.' I knew what she 'meant.' She meant nothing. Not knowing? No will. She meant nothing. Any further explanation or justification from her was just pointless noise.

"This," I waved to Alan. "There is no decency in death. There is just death and the shame of it for those left alive. Your disservice to him brought this on you and on him, and, normally, it is I who do the only decent thing to these remains, the only decent thing ever done for them in their lives. Well, this time, you get to do a decent thing, Bella, for your Alan."

Bella looked down at him and then looked back up at me, but she said nothing.

She didn't get it. Or, she got she would be doing something for him, and it was probably something scary, because it was coming from me, but she just didn't get it: the decency of what I was offering.

Stupid, little uncouth shit. Her naïvety could be so grating at times.

"You are going to give Alan a decent burial," I spelled it out for her.

"Oh," she said.

She looked at me blankly.

"How?" she said.

I stared back at her in astonishment.

My estimation of her intelligence? I didn't know I was underestimating how stupid she could be.

I blinked. James didn't appreciate that I had things to say, but, I'll give him this, at least he had quickness and a wit to him, but this one?

Maybe I could knock some sense into her with her crowbar, or at least I could knock the stupid out of her.

Words were pointless with this one.

I walked up to her, grabbed her by the neck and threw her onto the ground, and not so gently this time. "Dig," I commanded.

"Woof!" was Bella's response.

It was so easy to knock the wind out of this twenty-six year old child. And she was supposed to be so healthy, too.

So much for her exercise regimen.

She didn't move, just tried to catch her breath.

I stooped down beside her. "Bella," I warned, "we don't have all day. The Sun is nearing its zenith, and once it falls to the tree line, you will have dug a grave, six feet deep, or ..."

I glared down at her. "Or I will finish it for you, in which case it'll be yours."

Bella's cheek was on the ground where she lay. "Six feet?" she gasped, overwhelmed at the enormity of it.

"Don't tell me you were thinking of digging your true love a shallow grave?" I remarked scathingly.

"Um," Bella began, but then she saw the hard set of my eyes, so she finished lamely: "...no."

I was furious, thinking if it were her, and it were James, would she abandon him to flee, as I did? Did she have no regret? No sense of decency?

Was she thinking she would welch on this _gift_ I was offering? A gift I couldn't give to myself, because all I could do was to run and run and run from those accursed Cullens for my very survival? But this one? Could she run?

Well, she did, but she didn't get far. Not as far as I've gotten, but here I was giving her this thing, and she was balking at it?

Somebody should teach her some manners. Somebody should teach her to appreciate the things she was given.

I knew who that somebody was. And I would teach her some things. And she would learn.

Or she'd die trying.

"Well, then," I _tsk_ed impatiently, "get going!"

Bella propped herself up first on her elbows, like it were a hard thing to accomplish, then, lifting her chest, still on her knees, she looked down, put her hands to the earth, and started to dig.

...

To say that it was amusing watching Bella dig, not even making an inch of progress into the dirt. Well, I am a consummate liar, but I don't think I could manage a lie of this magnitude.

It wasn't funny watching Bella dig.

It wasn't even sad.

It was ...

I pitied her.

"You've never worked a day in your life, have you?" I remarked dryly, but my wry wit did not cover over my irritation. I wanted to scream at her to just try, but the sad fact was that she _was_ trying.

It was a misery, watching her.

"I have a job!" she snapped back.

"Yes," I bit back. "Your job is to dig, and you are failing spectacularly at it!"

"It's not my fault!" She began, "It's this dir ..."

"It never is your fault, is it?" I cut in.

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" she shouted, glaring at me from her hands and knees in the dirt.

"Oh," I beamed, my tone turning conspiratorial. "Did that one rub a little too close to the nub?"

Bella glared.

"Like ..." I offered. "You leaving messes everywhere in your life, and other people having to take care of them and you, little Miss Six-and-twenty?"

Bella's glare could have melted steel as it was hot with hate.

But it was she who first lowered her eyes to the ground in front of her.

"Fuck you!" she mumbled angrily and returned to digging.

_I wish,_ I thought, just as angrily.

I wish James would've just fucked me and forgotten that Swan girl and the Cullen family.

But he didn't. He wouldn't. And now I'm here, lording my loss over an obstinate, recalcitrant, _incompetent_ little fuck, who's full-on bitch-mode because I told her a little truth about herself.

How did I know this truth?

Fucking obvious: entitled little fuck. All people were like this, except the ones who recognized that they were and did something about it. This one? She runs off to the woods for a weekend camping trip so she can get everyone around her killed by me.

Dumb little fucker; it's _all_ her fault, and the first thing she does is to deny it.

"Uh, huh," I said instead dismissively. "Funny coming from you, as you're the one who's so fucked, little girl!"

I instantly regretted my statement. No matter how cool I had sounded, the bald fact was this: she had baited me, and I reacted.

I was too old, too wise, and too experienced to fall for her little shit-game, but that's exactly what I did.

"What_ever," _ she shot back, missing the interplay.

I have made a mistake, but she was too inexperienced, only having lived the length of one life to have picked up on it.

"Six feet, Bella," I said, remanding to her task. "How far have you gone?"

Bella sat up on her haunches and sighed heavily. "I can't!" she _tsk_ed angrily. "This root!" she waved down into the dirt.

I saw the root. I saw her (lack of) progress. I wasn't blind.

"I've got a question for you, Bella," I said.

Bella just glared. She knew it wasn't going to be a nice question.

"What?" she demanded angrily after seething in the silence.

I smiled. She didn't like censure, and she couldn't stand the silence.

Me, I could go years in the silence. I have, actually.

I held her gaze for exactly six more seconds, which for her, grew longer and longer.

I liked watching her bravado. I particularly like watching trying not to squirm with impatience, entirely spoiling her affronted look.

"So," I said slowly, drawing out the word. "God gave you a brain for what again, precisely?"

Bella looked away.

"Are you going to dig down six feet, through that root, in the next six hours with your bare hands?" I prompted.

Bella wouldn't answer.

That wouldn't do.

"Well?" I demanded.

"No," she whispered.

I waited.

Bella just sat there, radiating anger and despair.

"So?" I said.

Bella looked down at my feet, the crowbar lying nearby.

"Can I use that?" she asked humbly.

I smirked and looked down at it. Then, in a flash, I stepped down under it and then kicked it up into the air. It spun, suspended in a lazy spiral until it fell neatly into my waiting hands.

I examined it critically, ignoring Bella's astonished look.

"How did you ...?" she began.

"You hit me with this," I stated, interrupting her question.

Humans are always asking questions. None of the questions they ask have any relevance.

Bella looked at me from her haunches.

I smirked, tapping the crowbar in the palm of my hand, thoughtfully.

Bella, ashamed, looked away. "Didn't do anything," she remarked sullenly.

My smile widened. "Perhaps you didn't do it correctly. Perhaps I should take a swing at the back of your head and see if that does something? What do you say to that, hey, Bella?"

"I ..." she stuttered.

"Fair is fair," I put in, reasonably, smiling. Then I glared hard at her. "Right?" I demanded.

Bella looked back at me, hard, but pleading at the same time.

Finally, she said, "Yes. Fair is fair."

That was exactly what I wanted to hear.

My little Bella was all about fairness, ... or, if not fairness, then blamelessness. It wasn't her fault, unless she had to admit it to herself, and when she did admit it, she submitted to her punishment meekly. After all, by her own judgement of fairness, she deserved it.

She deserved her punishment when she was wrong.

Bella was such a perfect little victim. She fought, then she yielded.

She was just so ... perfect, that way.

I strode up her tapping the crowbar lightly in my hand.

"Bella," I said, standing over her, "bend over and put your face in the dirt."

She looked up me, pleading, one last time, from her kneeling position.

Then...

She bent over and carefully put her face in the dirt.

Total, and complete submission: that's what the image of her was, kowtowing to me, awaiting her punishment.

If I could pee now, I would have wet my pants. I have never experience pleasure as exquisite as this.

I stood silently over her for a few long seconds, breathing in her scent, savoring this moment.

"You know, Bella," I said softly. "Most people die, and they know exactly how they are going to die, and they know everything lead up to their death, and ..." I smiled, "there is not one thing they can do about it. They see it come, and they can't stop it, and then they die, and that's it."

I took the crowbar in my hand and brought it gently down, resting it on the nape of her neck.

A heavy sigh tore through her, shaking her body.

Not unlike a death rattle.

"Are you ready, Bella?" I asked.

"Yes."

She whispered the word into the dirt so quietly that if there were not other sound in the world, her 'yes' would have been quieter.

"Good girl," I said.

And I swung the crowbar in a singing arc, then brought it down, hard, with such force that the air snapped a crack in reply of me displacing it.

_Sna-CRACK!_

And I buried that crowbar two full feet into the dirt, snapping the protruding root neatly in twain as the crowbar landed three inches away from Bella's head.

Bella fell over onto her side from her bowed position, and moaned a shocked and mournful sigh. Tears were falling freely from her eyes. She looked up at me, surprised and dumbfounded, shocked into immobility.

Then she started crying, rolling up into a foetal position.

"Bella," I said calmly, "listen to me."

She sobbed softly, crying into her chest, she was so lost in the aftermath of this moment, the moment of her death. Maybe she couldn't hear nor understand my words, but she listened, or her body did, because she could do naught else.

"This is how it shall happen," I said. "You will die, and I will be the one who kills you, and you will know it, and there is not a thing you can do to alter its course."

Bella sniffled, still crying, but cried out.

I looked down at the crowbar. "There it is, Bella," I said. "Dig it out and it's yours to use."

Her progress so far? After a half-an-hour, she hadn't dug an inch six feet across.

She really needed to pick up the pace.

"Here," I offered, then stooped down, then uprooted the impedance, one end of the root that had been in her way.

I yanked. The ground trembled, then the root jerked, loosening its strangle-hold it had on the ground and slithered up out of the earth, twanging as I pulled on it, humming, anchored to the tree at the edge of the clearance for the camp. I played it, giving it some slack, then I pulled hard and fast.

_SNAP!_

It broke free from its anchoring tree then _cracked _through the air, winding over the top of my shoulder.

A bullwhip, fashioned from the root of a tree in this forest park.

If I had been human, the whip would not have flayed my skin. No, the force of it? It would have cut me down neatly into two pieces. I would have bled out right beside the girl I had just intimidated.

If I were human, that is.

As it stood, I would have to get a new shirt.

Annoying, that.

I turned to the other half of the root.

This should be easier, as it quested away from the tree, questing nutrients.

And finding me, instead.

I should be able to yank out this bitter end from the earth quite easily.

I reached down, letting my newly-fashioned bullwhip fall from my shoulder, reached down to the root and tugged.

Hm.

This was interesting.

I tugged harder, not expecting this resistance, then received quite a surprise.

The root had its origin in another tree, across the clearing. I yanked at it thoughtfully for a second. Now, wherefore, or how could this been.

I pursed my lips, and I felt my eyebrows crinkle in thought.

"Huh," I said, not being able to puzzle this out.

Bella looked up at me from the ground and sniffled, but her curiosity was aroused by my own.

I looked down at her, pondering.

"Uh, what is it?" she asked.

She shied from my look, thinking I was casting aspersions or censure, where in fact, or in this case, anyway, I was simply deep in thought.

"Sweetie," I said, and, reaching a decision, waving her away from the (very) shallow grave she was digging.

Bella blinked in surprise, but got up, brushing off the dirt and forest-floor detritus from her jeans and shirt.

I waved her back more. "Further," I ordered.

Bella's face was puzzled, but she took two steps back further.

I snorted a soft laugh. "Stay," I ordered, smiling.

Bella was too confused to react to my little ... _our_ little joke.

I was beyond caring about her puzzlement. I had my own curiosity to satisfy.

I crouched down, low to the ground, and I felt it, the power coursing through my legs, and the power built and build there, I felt it spilling up into my belly, and I smiled a feral smile at Bella, both terrible and beautiful.

Bella's look became shocked and scared.

"What ...?" she said, breaking the silence.

But something else was humming in the air.

A low growl was bubbling up out of the pit of my stomach and spilling up through my throat and out into the air through my clenched teeth.

_"I ... can ... do ... anything!" _I snarled, glorying, drunk, in the power coursing through my whole body now.

Bella stumbled two steps back.

And I leapt.

I leapt straight up into the air ... ten ... twenty feet, not even coming close to the tree tops a further sixty feet up in the air, but high enough.

O, yes: high enough, indeed!

At the zenith of my jump, I hung suspended in the air, gravity cancelled out perfectly by the strength of my ascent.

Then ... _CLAP!_ ... I brought my hands together and dove, falling, whistling through the air, ten, then twenty feet, falling faster and faster, harder and harder, until the Earth's crust and I kissed.

Then, like James penetrated me with his big, hard dick when he fucked me, I penetrated Mother Earth.

Good, hard, and deep.

And fast. Let's not forget fast.

I chuckled at my own joke as I submerged myself into the ground, six feet down, the depth I demanded from my little good-for-nothing fucked-slave, and then, I ... 'swam.'

I clawed my way through the Earth, just as a young, svelte athletic swimmer would claw her way through the water in a swimming pool, I 'swam' through the earth, seeking, questing.

It's harder to swim through dirt than it is to swim through water. Water is our element, and nothing can stand against us when water is at play, be it knee-deep or to the depths of the bottom of the Ocean. We are solid matter, hardened to that of diamonds, but in water, we are a force of nature that cannot be stopped nor outmaneuvered.

In the earth it's a little different, but let's see you try what I can do ... what I am doing now.

I quested. I followed the loosened earth, swimming my way underground, looking to the origin of the root, and finding it under the obliging tree.

Thousands of trees have obliged me over the years and centuries. One way to guarantee a body won't be found is to plant it under a tree.

Nobody looks for anybody under trees. The thought would never occur; it's too much work to hide someone thus.

Impossible, even.

Impossible for some, that is.

I spun around onto my back, under the earth, and 'looked' up with my fingers, questing, feeling the root systems.

Hm.

That's interesting.

I followed the roots not to their bitter end, but to another tree, then another, ... then another ...

... then another.

Well, I'll be! I have never seen such a thing!

The whole 'we are connected; we are all one in this ...' whatever people say they are these days?

I was seeing it, right here, right now in this forest.

Were all forests like this, I wondered, and I never stopped to look?

I swam back to the gravesite. It was easy to find: like a worm, I followed my own scent, a very clear marker, an _unique_-in-the-World marker of me, and what I am.

Each vampire has her own scent. Or his own stench. I could only stomach James'. All other male vampires' scents were a complete turn-off for me, and the females' ...?

Well, as Bella claims: I'm not a buggar. What did she call it? 'Lesbian'? What in the world did the word 'lesbian' mean?

And, no, I'm not stupid: I know what it _means. _What I meant was how in the world does 'lesbian' mean 'two women in a sexual relationship'?

This modern language was so difficult to me because none of it made any sense at all. They say 'gay' and don't mean 'happy,' they say 'queer' and don't mean 'odd.' They say 'fine,' 'I'm fine' when they don't mean 'refined,' nor 'purified.'

It was like a whole different language, all with somewhat similar sounding words, but each word had made-up meanings that had nothing to do with the word's origin.

I say 'accident' today, and it means 'intentional harm,' not 'incidental (sometimes happy) result.'

I could go on and on with this.

But I'll just say that if I annihilated every person who pretended to speak 'English' today off this planet?

I'd be doing 'English' a favour.

Just leave vampires three-hundred years and older.

The young vampires were just as bad, if not worse, than humans. They needed to go, too. All of them.

Particularly those Cullens.

My lips turned up into a snarl of feral pleasure and I sprung from the earth right in front of Bella's shocked face.

She wasn't shocked enough. She had been looking intently at where I had been, but now she fell over backward and screamed.

I landed on the ground lightly, smirking.

Nothing gets the blood flowing in a human like a little scream-fest.

And then: nothing gets my whole body hard with want than a little juicy snack, all primed and ready to be eaten.

No pleasure like that in the world: sucking somebody dry as they scream, struggle and die. Particularly when their good, hard cock is ejecting nice warm sperm into my hungry cunny.

Yes, I feed alone, on those special occasions.

James tends to be the jealous-type and wonders why he and his two-pumps weren't enough for me. I mean, after all, he got off, on top of me, and he dumped his cold, acidy load in me.

What more could a girl want, right?

I smirked at Bella, and had to swallow, or else I'd've drooled.

Or attacked her neck and sucked her dry.

You see, I was in a good mood.

But I ignored her shock, because I was just too excited with my discovery.

"The trees!" I exclaimed, pleased, almost gleeful: "they're all connected!"

Bella blinked, still surprised, then digested my words. Then she blinked again, this time a little more slowly.

"Well, yeah," she said.

I didn't like her tone, however. It was the, 'well, yeah; doesn't everyone know that?' kind of superior tone that these granola-nut freaks all adopted when they put on airs of 'we are all connected, we are one with the environment, so let us commune with Nature by driving our gas-guzzling, carbon-monoxyde-spewing vehicles to a public park and leave our litter all over the place' nonsense they all adopted.

In short, she didn't get it.

"No," I stated more forcefully, almost a little bit angrily. "When I say the trees are all connected, I really mean that they are all connected! I've never seen this before," I explained. "The root system is like ..."

I looked at her expectantly, weaving my fingers together from my hands, trying to convey to her what I saw under the earth, that she just didn't get.

She blinked again. "Like... 'integrated'?" she offered.

"Yes," I said. "They're all ..."

I stopped.

I just looked at her, looking at me, my hands knitted together, looking foolish. She was looking at me like James looked at me when I just wanted to rap or to vent and he had that tolerant, superior, smug look on his face that I so hated, because it made me feel so small.

I was taller than this girl, and she didn't have a smug look on her face. No, she had a patient, ... almost expectant look on her face, like she were waiting for me to explain myself so she could understand my excitement.

And my words meant nothing to her. I couldn't convey my excitement, and just adding more words made me look, and feel, more foolish.

And I hated that feeling: that feeling of being awkward and small, particularly in front of this lesser creature.

Why did she get to look at me, like James looked at me and like Laurent looked at me? They were men, so they could get away with them being men: it was a man-woman thing, men just didn't understand women, so they could be cruel and heartless to them, without even doing it intentionally. But this was a woman, and she just wasn't ... getting me, and my excitement.

And that wasn't supposed to happen. As different as we were, we had that commonality, and ...

And, looking at her, we didn't even have that.

I looked down at my interlaced fingers, feeling stupid for discovering this amazing thing.

"It's the Pando," she offered softly, seeing my disappointment.

I looked up at her. I understood her tone: pitying, but I didn't understand her words.

"It's the what?" I said.

Bella bit her lip, looking away. Then she looked back at me. "It's the Pando," she said again, then explained. "People come from all over the country, because this is, like, the biggest organism in the world, and they just discovered it recently, or something. This isn't a forest, it's one tree, or one ... something, root system, or whatever, and all the trees come from it, so they're like ... all connected," then she blushed, "... like you said."

"Ah," I said, looking at her.

Bella blinked and blushed, looking away.

"But you knew this already," I said.

"Yeah," she said, "that's why we ..." she swallowed, "we came out here, 'cause it was really ..."

She shrugged and shuddered, and her eyes started to shine.

Here she was, feeling miserable that her best-laid vacation plans had gone awry, had gone straight to Hell, straight to me, and all I wanted to do was ...

I was furious. With her. Here I discovered this amazing thing, and she was so casual about it, this thing, this discovery. So flippant: 'yeah' she said. Like everyone knew this, so why didn't I?

I wanted to put her out of her misery. I wanted to put her down for making me feel so stupid, particularly because of my excitement at discovering this novelty.

Jaded. Nothing kills wonder like that, and that's how she treated this knowledge. 'Oh, everybody knows.'

Well, I didn't.

I stood there, glaring, then I waved imperiously to the gravesite, the very shallow outline of one.

Bella blanched then walked back the shallow grave, knelt down, and started to dig.

"Sorry," she mumbled into the dirt.

She shouldn't have said that.

I lashed out with my hand, grabbing her by the nape of the neck and twisted her head so that she was facing me fully.

I glared. "Fuck you," I snarled, then threw her bodily into the dirt.

The air left her in a whoosh, and she lay there for a second, stunned.

I didn't care. I turned from her, facing my back to her, and sat down, hard, in the dirt beside her and put my face into my hands.

When you're immortal, it doesn't stop, and you can't run from it. The 'it' is you. You always have to face yourself. You can't run from your own shame; it's always there. My head felt so, so heavy now, and I just wanted to close my eyes, so I did, and make it all go away, my shame, my smallness, my inadequacies, my childish excitement, that I so wanted to share, so wanted somebody to get, and was that a crime? Was that a crime?

I couldn't even escape myself, not even from a scrawny, little human.

But it didn't go away, none of it. It stayed and stayed and stayed with me, no matter how hard I ran. James was gone, and I couldn't even lord my greatness over a nothing-human girl without me exposing my own weaknesses, even to her.

I heard Bella sniffle, lift herself onto her hands and knees and start digging again.

"Sorry," she whispered. And she dug.

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, this is like out from left field, but it's like really struck me.

Why are we all such slaves to fashion? I mean, before, it was the mini-mini skirt, every girl, then every woman was wearing them, even those who had no right to.

I didn't. No way am I showing off my knobby knees, thank you very much.

But now it's the perfectly form-fitted jeans, jodhpurs, actually, and knee-high soft-leather boots? I mean: everybody, and I'm like: really?

And, but then, there's this one girl at work, Susan, and she's like, way up there in management, and she does P-90X and has the so-the-Rosalie-Hale look (her hair's shoulder length), and she's rockin' the jeans and soft leather boots, and I'm like ...

Damn.

So, this weekend, I got me my own jeans-n-soft-brown-leather-boots, thank you, and I looked myself up and down, and I was like ...

Okay, some girl's gonna get herself way lucky tonight. Big time. I am lookin' _fiiiiiiine!_

`phfina, you sell-out, you slavin' it to the fashion, just like everybody else?

I say onto ye: _Hells, yeah!_

What works, works, even if it's the fashion and everybody's wearin' it.

**p.s.:** Okay, there's a lot of good stuff out there. You know? Like we all like to troll and say, why is this sh!t and why is that sh!t, but there's actually some good sh!t out there. Like, 'In a World' (check my blog entry) where I really, really liked that even the 23-y-o bimbo who moved in with the Dad had heart, and smarts, and, fuck! that was a great movie, and _the Snow Child_ by Eowyn Ivey, that I'm gonna read on my commute, but it inspired me to write (well, to _start!) _'The Little Girl of the Snows' under my jesumina kyd penname, and then there's Sales Team by Cat5 on literotica. Such a sweet, sweet, _d'awwww!_ story, so nice to read! And, okay, guy-girl, but they guy wasn't dickless, but he wasn't a dick, either, and he so could have been, but instead, he was the fucking knight in shining armor, but, lo, and behold, the girl was my heroine, because she was _way_ smarter than him, _way_ better than him, but she didn't rub it in his face, no, she was, like, _grateful_ to be admired and appreciated for who she really was, and she just didn't see it, until he did.

So many girls like that. One girl I know, perfect in every way, beat herself up for her imperfect skin, and her imperfect self, and yes, we're all imperfect, okay, but we're also God's gift, okay, and God loves us, in spite of, even _because of_ our imperfections, and I just wish I'd remind myself of that sometimes and more often, you know? We're all, each of us, amazing women, ... and men, too. Each having something to give to our families and sig. others and coworkers, and we really, really do and will be missed if we were gone, but we're here and doing the best we can, and damn, that's way better than we give ourselves credit for, so I MAKE sure I'm grateful for my coworkers and family and little nieces out visiting in California, and I miss them so much, and, _jeez!_ am I going on a rant or what?

_Pant, pant, pant!_

Okay. I'm okay again. I'm good now.

So what I was saying is there's so much good stuff out there; AND you can just get your b-u-t-t outdoors and go for a walk or a jog and just admire nature's handiwork, too. Like Pando, but do we? Noooo! We stay inside and sulk, but not this girl, nosiree, bob! I went _out_ this weekend to the river (estuary, actually) and looked at the boats and threw rocks into the water and let the sea-breeze muss my hair and wish really, really badly for a raspberry beret like that cute girl was wearing, 'cause it was _cold_ outside this weekend, but a good-cold and I was so glad for my scarf and my new jeans-n-boots and I was lookin' fine as I walked and checked peeps out and blushed as I realized I was getting checked out.

It was a nice weekend, even though I miss my nieces so, and now back to work.

_Bleh!_

But maybe it'll even be a nice week at work. Who know? I'll give that a try and see how it goes.

Luvus, my dear readers, be kind and gentle on yourselves!

kisses, `phfina


	9. Human

**Chapter summary: **"You're not human, are you?" she accused. Human? Why should I care if I'm human or not? Why would I want to so limit myself to be so wretchedly low as to be ... human? Why did that question never bother me so ... until now?

* * *

"What are you?" Bella whispered into the dirt as she dug.

I sighed. Sometimes, a lot of times, they asked this. It amused me at first, then it was tiresome, and then it didn't bother me any more, this question.

Food talked sometimes. So what? What did I care? They all stopped talking to scream, and then, eventually they stopped that, too.

Bella kept digging, but then she looked up from the ground. I felt her eyes on my back.

"You're not human, are you?" she said.

I got up abruptly. I felt Bella's surprise at my sudden movement.

"Did I tell you to stop?" I called over my shoulder coldly.

And I left her.

"No."

Her sad voice followed me.

The questions never bothered me before. What did I care if I were 'human' or not? What did I care if I were like them or not. I _wasn't _like them. It didn't bother me. It pleased me, in fact, not to be one of these rabble.

It never bothered me.

Before.

Now ask me if I cared. Stupid fuck. Murder my James then act all like what I did meant something to her. Oh, it would mean something to her all right.

But not now. She knew what to do, and she was finally making progress; she could be left on her own.

And I ... _just ... _couldn't stand being around her. I couldn't stand being around anybody right now.

So I ran.

My tattered shirt fell from my shoulder, and I let the low hanging branches pull it from me. It was caked with dirt, and I had no more use for it. It was easily replaced.

The jeans, also encrusted with my earthly swim, but were still of use to me. Jeans that fit me were hard to come by; I mean, that didn't make me look like a vagabond. It was all in the hips. A girl's hips were a special thing, and if the fit wasn't right, it just wasn't right, and that was noticeable. Guys' jeans were just wrong and girls' jeans were made for the girl wearing them, and oftentimes that girl was too small or too large and that just sucked, either way.

A good pair of jeans were a keeper. I got these off the mom from the camping expedition. She had kept herself healthy after she had her children, but, having the children, the hips were wide enough for me to be a good fit.

I ran, wearing my dirt-encrusted good jeans. I ran and ran and ran, the forest whipping by me, and I exulted in my freedom just to run when I wanted to.

And then I smelled it.

Water.

I put my hands above my head and dove.

A forest like this, no matter how well-'integrated' needs lots of water to stay alive. And a river may be miles away, but it's there, feeding the ecosystem, sustaining it.

I dove into live-giving water and felt it caress me and cleanse me.

This was my 'shower.' I bathed in the rivers, I let the thunderstorms rain down its fresh, pure water on me, and I was more one with the environment, more a part of it, than these stupid new-age-y granola-nut-eating idiots would ever be. Nature wasn't something outside of me to admire or to worship, I was a part of Nature, just as much as it was a part of me.

I served a very specific role in the cycle of life. For, after all, without Death, there would be no point to life at all. I know that very well. I have been undead for centuries, and it took me years to come to terms with what I am, and then decades to learn the point of it all.

There is no point. There is simply life, and death. You live your life, and then I bring you death. And if not I, then something or somebody else will.

Humans are so very good at killing each other. So good, in fact, that all the deaths cause by all the vampires over all the centuries of our existence is a drop of water in the ocean of people killing each other.

And, when they knew us, they feared us. Isn't that ironic? One death every week or two or three or more, and they're terrified of me.

Yet so many kill each other on the highways and byways, every day, and they think nothing of it, unless it's they that are dying, or they that are killing.

And ... 'accident.' They call it. They get into their vehicles, and drive too fast, or drive inebriated, knowing full well they are doing as they should not, and they call that an 'accident.'

My killings? Deliberate. Each and every one of them. No accident in what I do. And each one serves a purpose: my purpose.

As I swam, glorying in the water, I smiled.

When they knew us, they feared us, or worshipped us as gods and goddesses. That never happened for me. But it happened, for the Greeks and the Romans, and the Norsemen, they thought we were gods, and hung people out as sacrifices to us, and we looked after them, the cattle, protecting them from rogue marauders, other vampires or other tribes of men. We could take out an attacker just like that.

Don't you mess with my herd!

But those days are long, long gone. This is the modern age, and they no longer worship us, nor fear us. They're too sophisticated to believe in faery tales anymore, so we've entirely lost relevance to them.

They were nothing to us... until we became nothing to them.

I sighed, blowing bubbles in the water, watching them rise to the surface, then kicked and twirled and danced under the water.

A mermaid, I was.

Well not so much a 'maid,' per se, but when James and I crossed the 'Pond' to the New World, men on ships would see us and point and exclaim, 'Mermaid a-larboard!' and hide their eyes as I sparkled and shined and waved, smiling, at them, singing songs from my youth, reveling in the freedom and speed that I had as I skimmed over the ocean waves.

The freedom and speed those men did not have, stuck on their wooden ships, thinking they could venture out into Nature and tame it in their cramped, little wooden death boxes, starving, sick, venturing out into the New World to colonize it and make it exactly like the Old World, bringing their religion and their disease and their language and populating this New World.

And to what end? There was no end. There was no beginning, there was just here and now, and people rushing, rushing, rushing: running from the Past, headlong into the Future, and no time to stop, and be still in this Now, the only thing they had.

I sighed again. My jeans were now clean.

I wondered if I should make Bella take them off me to dry them.

_Nah,_ I thought dismissively. The little shit would fumble and stutter and be all together useless as she failed to do this one little thing that any servant girl in my day knew to do and do well, with or without the fuck from the master afterward, depending on his mood. We dressed our masters, we dressed our mistresses, and did whatever they wanted, and they lorded it over us, for they knew, and we did, too, we would be dead within days, nay, minutes without their beneficence. And did they just have to rub that in our faces. We were the common poor, and they were the rich or the royals, or sometimes both, and they'd just rub that in our faces, walking around like gods on Earth.

Sometimes they'd rub something else in a servant girl's face. The masters' dicks were very clean, don't you know.

Not that I would know, being a lowly scullery maid.

Or if that did happen ... I don't remember. I don't remember a lot about my human life, and sometimes that's saddening, or troubling, particularly now, being alone again. When I had James and Laurent was with us, there was no time for self-absorption: the company kept me sharp, focussed outside myself and on the others. You never knew what tricks they were up to. Most often James was the prankster, sometimes vicious, but you had to watch out for Laurent. It was the quiet, thoughtful ones that waited until you least expected it and then sprung a surprise on you for a good laugh all around.

Oh, I paid him back in full, every time. One time I knocked him through a tree or three, but you could see on his laughing, sardonic face that it was worth it.

When I had the company, I wasn't ... lonely. It was then that I didn't have regrets.

When I was with Bella, I wasn't thinking of myself and my misery, not so much. It was fun, torturing her, watching her trying to keep up, trying to cope. She was such a good little soldier I was actually routing for her at times.

Except when she zinged me back, and I had to get out, to be alone again, like now, and then the thoughts and the loneliness crept back in, and gripped my black heart in despair.

It was funny. Like, I almost needed her to ...

_Nah,_ I thought to myself scornfully.

I don't need her. I don't need anybody now.

Humans need each other. No man is an island.

But I'm not a man, am I?

And, just like Bella accused: I'm not even human.

What do I need of her, or anybody, or anything now?

I was all alone. And that was just fine, thank you.

* * *

**A/N:** Happy Thanksgiving to my 'Merkan friends. Eat turkey and stuffing! But don't too much that you're stuffed yourself. Even if relatives keep shouting at you: "EAT! EAT! EAT! YOU SO SKINNY GIRL! HOW YOU EVER FIND A HUSBAND AND MAKE BABIES?" ... not that I've ... experienced that full-court press from the relatives myself at all... (`phfina rolls her eyes and prepares for the Thanksgiving onslaught)


	10. Terminator

**Chapter summary: **"I know what you are!" ... well, at least this time it isn't 'space aliens.' Humans are so uninteresting ... that is, until you push on that one thing, and then boring becomes ... something else entirely. Something unexpected.

* * *

I stood, staring at Bella for a while, watching her dig.

Humans are so ... stultified. They get caught up in the one thing that they are doing with their lives, which is usually nothing: going to their 'jobs,' being at their jobs, but doing nothing there, going home, and at home, they turn on their large moving picture devices and stare at them.

Or they go to 'Happy Hours.'

I've heard it called 'happy hours,' these things that they go to, which seems to be a bunch of humans standing around at a bar talking about work and about the people they work with: the people they can't stand.

That's a 'happy hour' for humans. I'd hate to see their 'sad hours,' but I do all the time: it's called them not being happy, it's them realizing how pointless it all is and how little they actually mean in the greater scheme of things. Very, very few humans ever get the awareness to reach their 'sad hours.'

I'm happy for those very few: at least, for them, their blinders are off. They see reality for what it really is.

Not like this little shit.

Does not have a fucking clue. Swear to God Almighty. Digging like this? She's digging like she's just ... digging. No sense. No purpose. Just digging because she was told to.

At least she's a little fighter: fighting me every step of the way, but so ... trapped in her humanity. She needs to be told what to do, even as she rebels against it, but once she logs her protest, she falls right in line and digs away without heart, nor spirit nor purpose.

Useless waste of flesh, just like the rest of the mass of humanity.

Bitch needed to hop to it if she would have any hope of making it by nightfall.

I cleared my throat significantly, signalling for her attention.

I got it, all right.

_"Holy fucking shit!" _She screamed, a little scaredy-cat caught being herself.

At the same time she jumped, just an inch, but she fell onto all fours funny back into the dirt, unbalanced, and, overcompensating, fell toward me, not away, onto her side, grasping her chest, panting hard.

"Don't _do_ that!" she exclaimed finally after I watched her catch her breath.

"Eheh," I snickered, laughing at her pointless demand. I liked it, that I scared her out of her wits, but I wasn't really concentrating on what she had said, just that she had said it.

No. I was looking down at her ass.

It was a cute little butt, my Bella had, nice and rounded: womanly. Small, yes, but well-proportioned for her, the little twig of a girl.

Maybe I could call her 'twiggy.' I wondered if she'd like that. No. Not really. But I did wonder how much _I'd_ like it, watching her squirm with embarrassment as I called her that.

I think I'd like that, watching her squirm in discomfort. I think I'd like that a lot.

"So," I said, casually, and reached out with my foot, hooking onto her shoulder and pulling her to face me.

I reflected I liked moving the little shit around. Payback was a serious _bitch. _She took my James from me, and I was going to take every shred of dignity from her in recompense.

Then, ... maybe then, I'd start in on working her over.

I pushed my foot down firmly into her shoulder, pinning her down into the freshly dug dirt, and I heard her bones shift in her shoulder, groaning in protest.

I wasn't even pressing hard at all.

Bella didn't think so. She bit her lip, wincing, and looked at my foot, then, in surprise, looked up, looked North, then she looked away quickly.

I had hung my jeans to dry. So, or as we used to say: _ergo,_ I was quite naked. This seemed to bother my little Bella somewhat and more than somewhat.

"So," I said, "how long have you been digging?"

"Uh," she said, still looking away, but her brow furrowed in concentration. "Uh, I dunno."

"Uh, huh," I said dismissively. She had been digging for an hour. "How much progress have you made?" I demanded.

"Uh ..." She looked at the earth beside her, then glanced at me in embarrassment. "Not ... much?" she offered apologetically.

"Accurate," I said in clipped, displeased tones.

I took my foot off her shoulder and surveyed her work.

_Accurate_ was an accurate term. If she were a farmer, her (dis)ability to till the Earth would have earned first a spanking, then the lash, then a full-on flogging with possible banishment, as noone would want to breed this one, if her offspring might be equally as unproductive.

She'd be put in the stockade, then put out of town to starve to death in a forest much like this one now.

The irony did not escape me.

But in my day we _worked, _all day and all night, without complaint nor apology, as neither did anything to halt the oncoming Winter and the inevitable starvation, no matter how much we prepared for it. Harvest was the bountiful time, Winter the lean time, and even nobility had to tighten their wide, leather belts and eat the same pickled cabbages and root crops and eat the same smoked meat, meal after meal day after day.

Not this one. Not anybody, these days.

Maybe an unfair, blanket statement. But I say was I see.

I felt her stand, cautiously, behind me.

"You are aware you need to be done by nightfall," I stated coolly, turning to her.

She was looking at me, but then quickly looked away.

"Yes," she whispered.

I looked back at the outline of the grave, then _tsk_ed. "So, what are you going to do to complete this by then?"

I looked at her again, looking away from me. "Dunno," she mumbled, waving toward the grave in futility. "I guess," she cleared her throat, "I'll work harder or ..."

_"What?" _I snapped angrily. "Speak up."

The tongue. It came out and touched her lips. Then she cleared her throat quietly. "I ..." she began, just a touch less softly.

_"Look_ at me," I commanded.

I glared. She looked, blushing.

"It's _rude,"_ I snarled, "not to look at me when you're speaking to me or when I'm asking you a question. Remember that, Bella."

She bit her lip, nodding, then looked away.

An involuntary movement of her head.

Almost.

I sighed, walking right up to her, grasping her head firmly in my hands: her chin in one hand with the back of her head in my other, and I forcefully, very gently, twisted her head, so that she was looking right into my eyes.

"Bella," I said, my voice preternaturally calm, but my displeasure very evident in everything I projected to her.

I held her, glaring at her hard.

She looked like a little, tiny bird, transfixed by the stare of a cobra.

_"Nnnnf,"_ she whined helplessly.

Ah, I had picked her up off the ground. Her tiptoes barely brushed the (mostly) undug dirt.

I gently brought her feet to rest flat on the earth and removed my hand from her jaw, but my left hand bunched her hair in it, immobilizing her head, forcing her to face me, even against her involuntary wish not to.

"I tell you to look at me, and you do not," I said, a quiet anger in my voice.

"Urh nekkid!" she whined.

I swear to God! ...

Actually, I was doing that a lot recently I noticed, again with displeasure.

But I declare! Understanding these moderners and the way they spoke. It's as if I needed a translation from what they were saying to the English language.

"What?" I snarled.

"You're-h nay-ked!" she said.

Then, realizing what she said, she blushed hard, and tried to look away.

Her eyes managed to slide to my right shoulder.

I'll give her that. Her efforts were commendable.

I chuckled lightly. "Yes, I am," I said, "and that makes you uncomfortable."

She nodded, or tried to, wincing as she pulled her hair bunched in my hand.

"Hm," I said, "and you think I give a _fuck_ about your comfort because ..."

"Yuh donn," she said.

I felt my hand just itching to smack her.

Furgesson. She spoke like a Scotsman. That was: unintelligibly.

I didn't smack her.

It took an heroic effort, for which I am to be commended, but I didn't smack her.

Not just yet.

But she saw my effort, and fear was in her eyes, making them shine, then a tear sped down her cheek.

"I know what you are," she said, gulping at her own daring.

I regarded her coolly for one second. "And ..." I prompted carelessly.

What would it be this time? Humans were so ...

I sighed.

Humans were so _unimaginative! _So repetitive, every single time, and each time thinking they were original. Each century it was something different, and for each century it was exactly the same. These days it was 'space aliens.' _Boring!_

Well, maybe this one would be different this time.

And maybe I'd shit sunshine out my ass, too.

I waited, unruffled.

"Well?" I barked, finally losing my patience as she stuck herself on working up on her courage to spit it out.

No spitting had commenced, and my patience was exhausted.

"You're a terminator!" she glared at me hard, daring and terrified at the same time.

I mulled over this word: _terminator, _pursing my lips.

I suppose if one were to look at the word, it was what I did. People had an origin, and I was their terminus.

But I'm not sure that's what she meant. Words in language twisted around until they no longer meant what they ... well, meant.

I blinked.

"A robot," she whispered in explanation. "When I hit you with my crowbar, it went _clang!"_

The last word came out from her in a close approximation of the clarion call of a bell rung.

But the first word?

"Robot," I repeated. Two syllables that didn't make any sense to me. What was this thing?

"Yeah," she said, daringly. "You ..."

She looked into my eyes for confirmation, but found none.

I blinked.

Then sighed. This was getting boring. Well, at least I wasn't a 'space alien' ... as I cared about that, either.

I was going to shove her back into the earth, and force her to be productive in this way, as she was thoroughly failing in being productive entertaining me.

But then she said. "I guess you don't call yourselves that, but if I say one name ..."

This got my attention.

This person. This girl I held by the back of her head, her resemblance to Bella Swan was _uncanny_, and not just in her looks, but in demeanor, comportment, and her modes of expression. If they had been twin sisters and grown up together, there would be a possibility of an explanation.

But the only explanation that made any sense, since she wasn't Bella Swan's twin, was that they were weird.

This is a word I do not expect you to know. Not anymore. What this word means is ... weird.

I can't explain it. The Germans have the 'double gainer' the monster that 'doubles' a person, and then eats them, replacing them, because there can be only one. But the English have the weird, and the weird is you, so much you, but your opposite, because where you are reticent, your weird is bold, where you are unsure, your weird is confident, but it is you, so much you that you are incomplete without her, after meeting her, your weird and you are one whole person and both of you are incomplete without the other.

Your weird unconsciously knows everything you know, wants everything you want, but honestly, cleanly, purely, and loves who you love, ... with her whole heart.

Did this girl know Edward Cullen, instinctively, via the weird?

My grip on the back of her head tightened.

"aaaahhhOOOOuuuuuwww!" she cried out in pain.

I ignored it. _"What name?"_ I hissed.

"Ewwn!" she whined, "ewwn! I-if, if I say it you'll go crazy and kill me!"

I brought her face right up to mine.

She knew.

She knew Edward Cullen. She saw my James destroyed by that _thing!_

"You," I snarled, shifting my hand to her throat, "tell me, right now, the name or I swear I will tear you limb-from-..."

"John Connor!" she shrieked, "John Connor! Okay? Now off me, you fucking metal bitch!"

I blinked.

"John ... Connor?" I said, utterly confused.

Bella blinked back at me, confusion crossing her face, too. "Yeah," she said, looking at me. "John Connor, you know?" she asked.

"No," I said, letting my hand fall from her throat. "Somebody you know?"

She brought her hand up to her throat, rubbing it gingerly. "No," she said, "but you're supposed to ..."

She stood there, rubbing her throat, waiting, looking at me expectantly. I stood there, a stone, looking at her back.

She sighed. "John Connor?" she tried one more time.

"I'm supposed to know this person?" I said.

She shrugged, deflated and kicked at the earth. "Yeah," she said.

"So," I said slowly, "this was your theory? That I was some ... 'terminator'? And would kill you if you said this person's name?"

"That's what happened in all the movies," she said.

"Ah!" I said, understanding now, "the ... 'movies.'"

That's how people collected the sum-total of all their knowledge, they went to moving pictures and believe what they told them all.

Bella saw my scorn, and her eyes dropped. Her chin started to quiver. "Yeah," she said sadly. "You were suppose ta ..."

She bit her lip, waving toward me, helplessly.

I smirked. How ... juvenile! She pinned her hopes on another fantasy, hoping to best me with this specially-gained knowledge only to have her standing there, looking like a complete fool.

Her one ephemeral victory over me, and even that was taken away from her.

And her victory? She wanted me to fly into a rage and kill her? And that would be her victory?

I shook my head and chuckled softly. It could be a cruel chuckle, but it was relieved. She wasn't Bella Swan's weird. She wasn't anything.

Bella looked up at me at the sound, her eyes showing the hurt inside.

"Bella, come here," I purred, fully restored to my sense of superiority over this lowly, beaten creature.

"I donn wanna," she sniffled.

I smirked, looking at her. How could I have been scared of this? This poor, little thing?

"I don't carrah," I responded, lightly now, almost happily.

She looked at me, hurt at my teasing, and I waved her toward me, easily, but with the full force of my authority. "Come, come, Bella!" I laughed lightly. "I won't bite you ... yet," and then I snickered at the truth of my own little jest.

I could be easy, issuing my commands, but they were still commands. She had to obey.

She looked at me, seeing me for the first time it seemed, and fear entered her eye and pierced her heart, but she slunk up to me, reluctantly and so wound tight up in herself, tears falling down her cheeks. Her forehead, when her head was not bowed, was level with my cheek bones, her lips, shoulder-height.

I pulled her into me, and her lips pressed against my collarbone, and my arms wrapped around her, squeezing her tightly into me.

She was stiff as a board, but, bit-by-bit, she lost her stiffness as she lost her very will, it seemed. Soon, she was sobbing softly into my shoulder, her head, her whole body surrendering itself into mine.

Fuck, this little one was a keeper, the way she fought so hard, the way she surrendered so completely. If I were her Alan, I would've known what a Godsend she was, and would've counted my blessings, every day, and every night.

If I were Alan.

But I am not.

I am Victoria Sutherland, and I do not care about this little bird in my arms.

"It's okay," I cooed, and my voice sounded loving and tender. "Cry, cry, little one."

She cried, angry at herself now that she was crying and that made her cry all the more.

"Ooh, my little one," I cooed, "so sure of yourself, and so, so wrong, eh?"

"But, b-but," Bella cried, "y-you're just so ... cold an-and hard, ... an-an, an-and terminators are cold and they're indestructible, and you're ..."

She couldn't go on and cried some more.

"Yes," I said, "and you so wanted me to be this thing, didn't you?"

"Yes!" she wailed.

"Because it would explain everything for you, wouldn't it?" I said. "Everything would make sense now that I fit your nice, neat explanation."

She cried and cried. My words weren't helping her tears.

"But I am not this thing. I don't fit into anything you can try to fit me into. I am beyond your reason and ..." I said.

"Ih-it's just not fair!" she whined, interrupting me.

I would have glared at her for that. Or smacked her across the forest.

I just held her now. "No," I said, "it isn't. Life isn't fair. Nobody said it was."

"Yeah, but..." she said and sniffled.

I felt her snot and tears on my shoulder.

I waited for her to say more, but she didn't, so I let her cry herself out.

It took a while.

...

We were sitting on the forest floor. Or, I was sitting on the forest floor; Bella was sitting on my lap, facing me.

I pulled her, gently, off my shoulder, looking into her face.

"Better?" I asked lightly.

Bella sniffled and looked away, blushing.

I brushed her bangs out of her face, and smiled a lopsided grin at her. 'Better' was a relative term, to be sure, but she had been sorely in need of this cry out to relieve this built-up pressure, and so, yes, she was in _terrible_ shape now, relative to the rest of her life, but she was, indeed, feeling better than she was feeling a bit earlier.

It's all relative.

But this begs the question of why I let _her_ relieve this pressure whereas for everyone else, I relieved their pressures of life by ... relieving them of their lives.

And my answer to that is: fuck off.

Like I have to answer to anyone, even questions begged to be answered, even to myself.

I knew what the fuck I was doing; this was all just part of the game.

"Do you have a request for me?" I pressed.

Bella was in a very slight euphoria of the emotional release. This made her easy to manage, more malleable.

Her brow clouded as she puzzled out my words.

"I..." she said, looking at me full-on again, finally, "I don't know what you mean."

My lip twitched upward. "You're dehydrated," I stated. "I smell it in the salt of your tears. Do you have a request for me?" I restated slowly, easing my way through the fog of her emotions.

"Uh, ..." she said, "I'm ... thirsty?" and blinked a couple of times wonderingly.

"Yes," I said quietly, waiting patiently.

I wondered if Bella knew what a 'request' was and what it wasn't. 'I'm thirsty' is not a request, it's a statement. I had already stated this for her.

I wonder how school teachers did this all day, every day, with children in schools and children pretending to be adults in colleges and universities in this God-forsaken frontier country.

The further one distanced oneself from England, the more barbaric the natives became.

I've heard, for example, that in Australia, where England emptied its prisons, people drink copious amounts of beer from the can, of all things, punch each other in the face and wrestle with crocodiles ... and the men watch admiringly, selecting their mates from the most savage beer-drinking, face-punching, crocodile-wrestling women of the lot.

'G'day, mate,' indeed!

Bella looked at me expectantly, but I didn't move, either.

"May I ..." she tentatively asked, "may I go get a drink of water?"

She knew how to say 'may I'! Will miracles never cease?

I regarded her coolly. "You have bottled water in your tent, do you not?" I said.

"Yes," she answered carefully.

"One of which you drank earlier without permission," I added.

Bella was silent.

I pondered in this silence, searching her face.

She dropped her eyes.

I smirked.

"Go to your tent," I said brusquely; "bring a bottle of water here."

"Uh, okkkkhh..."

The word died in her mouth as she began to choke up. You see, her face had purpled as my hand flashed out to her throat, as I strangled the word in it.

I shook my head gravely at her.

Her eyes were bugging out, filled with fear.

"Go," I said. "Obey. Don't 'okay' my command, just do it, Bella, yes?"

I glared, strangling her.

She nodded slightly, her chin touching my hand.

I let her go, pushing her away from me, off my lap.

She went, staggering, gasping for breath.

But she went.

...

"Bella," I said, "put the bottle here." I patted the ground by my knee.

Bella bent to place the bottle there.

_Unladylike, _I remarked sourly to myself.

"Sit down, sweetie," I said gently.

"Oh," she said surprised, becoming vaguely aware that she was standing and I was sitting, or, not aware of that, but that this should not be.

She sat, facing me, and placed the bottle by my knee.

I was pleased to see it unopened.

"This bottle," I said, not indicating it with even a flick of my eyes, "did you fetch it for yourself, or ... for me?"

"Oh," Bella said, realization dawning on her face. "Um ..." the color rose up on her cheeks and her eyes darted away. "For you?"

I growled, low, in the pit of my stomach. I _hate_ being lied to.

"Really?" I asked, perturbed.

Bella looked back at me in shock, her eyes widening. "Um, ... yes?"

"Bella, ..." I sighed. "What is your everything? What is your _only _concern from this moment, and every moment for the rest of your miserable existence?"

"Uh, ... you," she said, her hands twisting in her lap.

"And that's what your focus was when you asked for and brought me this bottle?" I prompted.

"But you said ..." she began.

I roared, and the smile on my face was pure evil, pure predator.

Bella's face went white with shock, and she leaned back in fear in her sitting position.

My hand on her knee stopped any movement, however.

"Was your focus. On me. Bella Swan. When you asked for. And got. This bottle. Bella Swan." I stated each phrase with emphasis and precision, so that even she could get it.

"Um, no...?" she gasped.

I smirked.

_Keep 'asking'-out your defiance, Bella Swan, _I snarled to myself. _Keep thinking I don't observe this childish behavior._

I lifted my hand from her knee and patted her cheek affectionately.

Bella was absolutely rooted to the spot, waiting in terror for me to lash out at her.

"Good girl," I cooed.

I took the bottle at my knee, opened it, and poured the contents onto the ground. It puddled, but then began to seep into the spongy forest floor.

"Bella," I said. "Fetch _me_ a bottle of water. Now."

"O..." Bella went white again. "Um," she added helpfully and stood to go.

But she did not go.

"Victoria, may I ..."

"Bella," I interrupted, "sit. Face me. Ask your question that way."

She sat. "May I," she said softly, gulping. "May I get a bottle of water for me, too?"

I glared at her.

"No," I said curtly. "Go."

"Ummmm,..." Bella said. She looked at my hard, hard face.

A tear fell. She stood and left.

She ... _still ..._ wasn't thinking solely of me. Even as I worked so very hard to impart this valuable lesson to her. She just totally ... _missed it!_ It was mystifying to me.

What a hard nut to crack, this Bella Swan!

I was having fun.

...

"This bottle of water, Bella," I said. "It is for whom?"

Bella blinked. "For you," she said.

"You sure," I demanded.

"Yes," she said.

She didn't waver. She didn't look away in shame.

This bottle was for me.

"Mine," I said, patting the bottle, verifying.

"Yes," she said.

I smiled, pleased.

I waved her to me.

Now she did bite her lip and blush.

She came to me, sitting on my lap, but she wouldn't look at me.

"Ooh, Bella!" I exclaimed, "this first hour, so hard!"

She still wouldn't look at me, and she blushed harder.

"You'll learn," I reassured her. But then I shrugged, "Or you won't. Mayhap."

I reached down at got the bottle of water.

"Bella," I said, "would you like a sip of this water?"

Bella bit her lip again. "Yes, please."

"I have a name," I said coolly.

Bella looked at me apologetically, "Yes, please, Victoria."

I smiled at her. "Thank you, Bella. It's been a long, long time since I have heard my name from another's lips, and it pleases me to hear you say it."

Bella look at me in surprise.

I shrugged. "Just an explanation, Bella. Don't get your panties into a twist about it."

She blushed hard and looked away at that.

I chuckled lightly.

_Such a shy, little thing!_ I thought. _She's just begging for it, isn't she?_ I thought.

She has the kind of sweet innocence that demands a good, hard, and immediate fucking to satiate the lust she enflamed.

Alan was a lucky guy to have her ... while he was alive.

I picked up the bottle. "Open this for me, my dear," I purred.

It took her a bit. Her hands were trembling, it seemed.

I took the bottle from her trembling hands.

"Bella," I said, "everything comes from me. This sip of water. The drink you had this morning. Everything."

I looked into her eyes.

She was really uncomfortable at the closeness of her face to mine. It was ...

How do they say it?

It was freaking her out.

I blew into her face.

She reeled back, embarrassed.

But then, confusion flooded her face.

"Strawberries?" she asked in an awed hush.

I smirked. "Yes," I said.

Our very close proximity was giving her the full impact of my scent, and she had been struggling, trying to be disgusted by it.

But now she was, despite herself, fascinated by it.

Soon, o-so-soon, she'd be enchanted. That's when, if I were to leave her side, she'd miss it, and, when I returned, even silently as Death, she'd know I was there, not even seeing nor hearing, nor knowing, not consciously, but she's smell me, and her blood would boil with the need to be near it.

"And ..." her face became puzzled. "Something else? Something ..."

She pursed her lips, chewing on the thought, trying to capture what she was smelling, what she was feeling.

"Ginger," I said, and then I giggled.

Strawberry and ginger.

I smell nice.

_Very_ nice.

"Ah! Yes!" she said, triumphantly, "that's it! It's ..."

Then she looked at me, drawn back to the present from her triumph, and became very embarrassed.

"It's," she said, "yeah, it's ... ginger. That's it."

Her start was triumphant, but now her words were deflated.

"Yes," I said, primly, "it is."

She gave me a sidelong, shy look. "How do you ...?"

"Bella," I said.

How-do-you and why-questions; who- and what-are-you questions. None of these mattered.

Bella bit her lip.

I smirked. "Tilt your head back, sweetie; let's satiate your thirst."

She blushed again.

God! It was just so hard for me, even as I delighted in her blushes, her embarrassment. She painted a pretty picture, and all I wanted to do is wrap up this canvas, take all my colors, her red and mine, and see what art we could make of and on each other.

But it was just so hard, because she was an intoxicating concoction of coconut and coffee; nothing, ... _nothing at all_ like that Bella Swan's scent that swept James off his feet, damn her, but still something you'd take at dawn and savour, languorously, throughout the entire morning.

But her creamy white skin and her chocolate brown hair, just like that Bella Swan, had me drunk with desire, just for a taste of her.

But there was no such thing as 'just a taste.' I had to watch myself, full as I was even now, burning with desire to suck her dry.

It'd be a real shame to kill her by accident. She'd miss out on all the fun! And then where would we be, eh?

She tilted her sweet, little head back, obediently, and exposed that neck of hers, her pulse beating out a siren's call to me as clear and as strong as birdsong, greeting the dawn.

And almost as inevitable. Beautiful, in its own way, but ...

I sighed, breathing more strawberry and ginger onto Bella's face, and she sighed, breathing me in.

I brought the bottle up, just about her lips and tilted just a little bit of water in.

She swallowed greedily, ... gratefully, her eyes losing focus for a second.

There is _nothing_ to a human like water when she is thirsty.

Take this on faith from someone who _knows thirst_ like no human ever will.

She regained focus and presence after she drank and gave me her big, big doe eyes.

"Good?" I asked, superfluously.

She nodded.

I saw we both were masters of the understatement.

"More?" I offered.

She nodded her head slowly, her mouth opened to receive more, her eyes both cautious and hopeful at the same time.

I smirked down at her, holding, resting her head in one hand, holding the bottle in the other. I brought it up above her lips again and poured in a bit more.

This was the thing with hope. So easy for me to crush a little hope, but so much more exquisite if I nurtured it for a while until it blossomed into something beautiful.

Something really, really awful to kill.

She, ... _we,_ finished off the whole bottle in this way, in slow, small sips that she savoured with each thirsty swallow. A maiden lost in the desert, and I, her only oasis.

...

I righted her and put the bottle aside.

"Now," I said, business-like, "as to payment for that."

"Payment?" Bella blinked, surprised.

"Yes," I said, smiling lightly. "What do you have to offer in exchange for what I have given you now, this respite and the relief from your thirst ..."

I smirked at her. "Well, relief from _a _thirst..." and then I chuckled.

Bella looked at me in confusion. "I don't understand."

It took everything I had not to roll my eyes and sigh.

I didn't know what she didn't understand, either. The innuendo, or the demand for payment.

She's not _that_ naïve, is she?

I looked at her and then actually did sigh.

Yes, she was that naïve.

'Twenny-six' and she needed me to tell her 'Now, Bella, this is sexual innuendo, this implies you want to be fucked. Do you understand?' Bella: 'Uh ... come again?'

I think _she_ was the one torturing me, actually.

So I focused on the payment. "What's not to understand?" I snapped, a bit more impatiently than I wanted, "I gave you water. What will you give me?"

"Uh, I gave you the water," Bella corrected me.

She needed a good smack, didn't she?

"And whose water did you give to me, sweetie?" my voice dripped honeyed camaraderie. "Yours or mine."

"Well, it was my wa-..." She stopped, looking at my shaking head.

"Bella, _you_ are mine. Everything you have is now nothing, because it is now mine. This water? Not yours. Mine. I thought we established this already." I picked up the emptied bottle. "Whose water did you give me, Bella? Again. One more time."

Bella bit her lower lip. "Yours."

I nodded. "Yes. You said so yourself. This water was for me. It is mine."

I'm glad we got this little point resolved.

"So," I said. "How will you pay me?"

Bella's lip worked as she thought it over. "I've got some money back in the tent. I can go get ..." She blinked. I was stone. "... it ... if you ... want."

My lips twisted up evilly. "Money." I said. "You want to pay me with money."

"Uh ..." Bella looked like a deer in the headlights. "Uh, yeah?"

"Tell me, Bella," I said, "what need have I of money?"

"Uh ..."

Poor Bella! This was a totally foreign concept to her, that someone would not want money, would not need it.

"You use money to buy things, yes, Bella?" I asked her. "What things do I need to buy, that I can just take? What need have I of your money?"

"Uh ..." She blushed and looked away. "Nothing, I guess."

"Yes," I said. "Nothing, you guess."

My hands wrapped around her, my right around her shoulders, my left around the small of her back. "I do not want money, Bella Swan."

"Uh..!" Now she looked absolutely panicked. "Uh! Uh! What do you want?" she squeaked, "'cause I can get, um ..."

"Yes...?" I purred, and my left hand reached down back into the crevice of her jeans, finding what I actually did want: that sweet, little ass of hers.

"Uh!" Bella panted scared. "Uh!"

I looked intently into her face, but her eyes were darting everywhere as she tried to squirm away.

But there was no squirming away from my iron grip.

My finger wormed its way toward her little asshole, and then ...

"No! No! No! No! Nonononono! Please no! No! Please! Please!"

Bella absolutely froze in my grip and then exhibited almost what appeared to be a seizure.

I stopped. I paused, looking at her.

Her face was white, pasty, turning green, and she was going into shock.

"Bella," I said soothingly, "relax, sweetie, this is ..."

"no," she whimpered, so tiny, so lost.

"This is going to happen," I affirmed gently, "just relax and enjoy it, because ..."

My finger quested again into her crack, seeking her tight, little, closed-off anus.

"Nooo!" she screamed, seizing again. "Nooo! Please! kkk-puh-kkk-please! Noooo!"

I hadn't even penetrated her anus, but she was exhibiting signs of severe trauma.

I took my questing hand out from her jeans. I moved my hand back up to the small of her back and watched her, monitoring her.

She was in shock, her eyes dilated and unfocused, her whole body stiff as a board, ready to break. She was trying to breathe but was hyperventilating so badly no air was going in at all.

"Please," she whimpered, after a moment, when she had partially returned from her shock. "Please, don't. D-don't. Please. Y-you ... I'll give you anything but please, don't ... not that."

"Bella," I said softly.

"Please," she whispered.

"Bella," I said, "I can have anything I want, because I already do. There is nothing you can offer me that I cannot take. There is nothing you can withhold from me. Do you understand me?"

I held her strong, firm. My hands did not move. They held her into me, but they did not quest over her. They held her, and that was all.

"D-dd-dd-tt-ttt but, ..." she stuttered, her eyes glassy. "But ..."

She was reeling, still very much in shock.

"B-but ..." she panted, "wh-what if I ..." She looked at me then quickly looked away.

"What if I give you anything you want?" she said.

I looked at her quizzically. "As opposed to ... what?" I asked, not understanding. "I can take anything I want from you, Bella."

"What if I give you ... anything you want ... wu-wu-willingly?"

Bella went white, forcing out the word. She tried to swallow, but was just too scared.

I held her, considering.

"Anything I want, huh?" I said.

"P-please, just ..." she began.

"Willingly?" I confirmed.

Bella shuddered. "Yes," she said, looking at me, then looking away. "Yes."

I smiled.

I slowly, slowly brought my right hand up her shoulder and brushed back her hair.

"I accept," I said.

Bella's whole body shuddered a sigh in relief.

"But, Bella," I glowered.

She tensed right up again.

_"We, _you and I, are going to talk about this. And _we,_ you and I, are going to get to the bottom of this, understand?"

I glared at her.

"Talk," she said. "Talking's okay." she said.

She really needed a smack for saying 'okay,' again.

How come she was just too delicate to be smacked around now?

I looked at her.

"And after we talk, sweetie," I said, "I am going to fuck the shit out of your sweet, little ass, and ..."

"No! No!" Bella was shaking her head violently, stiffening up again.

"Because you are going to beg me to do it, sweetie; do you understand?" I said.

"No!" Bella said, so distraught. "No!"

"Shh! Bella," I said comfortingly. "Shh! Sweetie. Not now, understand? Not now."

"No!" she cried, so lost in terror.

"Bella," I said, "come back to me. I'm holding you." I brought my hand back down to her shoulder. "I've got you, you understand?"

"Puh-please," she whimpered.

"Sh-sh-sh-sh!" I whispered. "I have you, sweetie. I have you, and I'm not letting you go."

I don't know if this was she wanted.

No. Strike that.

I knew this was what she needed. She was in shock, and she needed to be held. She needed to give her fragile, broken body over to somebody strong, indestructible, who would care for her body so she could let go. I brought my right hand back up to the back of her head and pulled her into me, resting her head on my shoulder. Her body, so tight, shook violently once, and I held her through it, then it shook again, hard.

And then she collapsed into my embrace, and she cried and cried and cried.

"I have you, baby," I said softly. "I have you, and I am not letting you go."

* * *

**A/N:** 'Bella' ... was sure she knew what Victoria was, and she was wrong. Just ... wrong.

Victoria knew she could take anything she wanted from the little human, and she was right. She can do that. She's done that, thousands of times already.

So how come Victoria was ... just ... so wrong, now, too?

This was a _really_ expensive bottle of water. For both of them.


	11. Kiss Me

**Chapter summary: **She said to me: "You are so weird!" The one thing I like about this little morsel: I am surprised sometimes what comes out of her sweet, little mouth. This is fun!

* * *

_Twenny-six_.

I sighed onto Bella's hair. She was 'twenny-six,' but just such a baby. Surely, it can be granted that she's been through a bit of trauma recently ... like: today, probably seeing more dead people than she had seen in her life.

People died all the time, and everywhere, but people weren't affected by it, unless it smacked them right in the face, like a parent dying, or friend, ... or even sister.

My sister died twice. Once she went out on an errand, and she never returned.

... Until she did. Changed. Transformed. An angel from heaven.

That's how I saw her, because I was living in hell. Worked to pure exhaustion, then beaten, every day, by the other servants, if I were lucky, and if I weren't, then the master had an example made of me, a fourteen-year-old girl, for trying her best, and just not ...

I was living in hell. And then my sister came. And she took me away from all that, and gave me this new life.

And I _embraced_ it! I _loved _it. The power, the ability never to be hurt by anyone again, but to hurt others, and good.

But then, me, my sister, my new sisters... seven of us. We made too much noise in the wrong place.

A coven of girls. That's a no-no, I guess, because then the Volturi came, judged us, took Heidi, and made to destroy us all. I felt it. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. I felt it in my bones. Lying Aro was all sweetness and kindness, telling us we could go, but I saw in his eyes only Death for us. So I screamed _RUN!_ And I ran, and ...

And only I made it. I ran and I ran and I ran and I didn't look back, because the dread was too much, too strong for me to do so, and I dived into the ocean and I swam.

I couldn't get far away enough fast enough.

Anne ... didn't.

She didn't make it. Only I did.

That's when I found out that even a vampire could fear, even a vampire was vulnerable, so whenever I saw other vampires ...

I'm very good at running away. Very good. Oh, is this your territory? I'll just leave now, no problem.

Decades. More that a century, maybe, I had done that when I surfaced in Iceland then Greenland, then made the long swim to the New World. The Volturi were Old World, and very comfortable in their seats of power. Why would they come out all the way across the world to hunt very little, quiet me? I was careful. I didn't make mistakes. I cleaned my messes. I kept my head down. I learned my lesson.

And the dread didn't return ... as a physical presence in my gut.

Only when the Cullens were after me and James.

God! The all-powerful Volturi and now the yellow-eyed Cullens, and what might did they carry? All of them seemed supremely confident in their power.

And they destroyed James. James, the tracker. James who hunted other covens ... for _fun._

They took him out without even trying.

I thought I was safe with James now. Protected.

And Death came and visited me again, even now.

When was my turn?

I had seen Death aplenty, and had been the cause for most of it. I was, among humans, supreme and powerful, but I knew I had a place in the hierarchy, and Death was just waiting in the wings for my first slip up, my first indiscretion.

This girl, however, _twenny-six_, thought, foolishly, however, that she was invincible because of her youth. Death? That happened to old people. Not to her, not to her friends, not to her fellow campers, ... not to her Alan.

And now she had seen it all. It was right in her face, and there was no escaping it despite her bravado. Death was holding her in her arms, and there was no 'slip up' that she could make now.

It was inescapable for her, so she just had to come to terms with it.

And she wasn't. She fought the reality of this at every step, trying to hold onto her shredded dignity, as if that could save her.

Nothing could save her now.

I had her.

She sniffled into my shoulder, and sighed a shaky sigh.

I held onto her. "Have you recovered?" I asked. "Are you whole?"

She tried to pull her head back from my shoulder.

She couldn't.

"Yeah," she said, swallowing. "I guess."

I pursed my lips. _She guesses,_ she says.

That's what I loved about this generation. So certain about everything. They called them the 'Millennials,' because this was now the 'nought's again, 2006, as if that had some significance for the people living in it, but they may as been called 'the lost generation,' or, if we were being entirely accurate, 'the whimps': laying about, their hands out, expecting to be spoon-fed everything, and complaining when their lattes had too much foam.

I don't know what a 'latte' is. I don't particularly care.

"You can let go now," she said. She paused, then added quickly, "That is, if you want to."

I did.

I told myself I did want to.

Bella was such a big baby, and ...

And I am eternal, and I'm _not_ human, but me, my sister, we were of child-bearing ages when we were turned, and I was so _not_ interesting in having a child when I was alive. I was more interested in surviving and not getting in trouble, not getting noticed. I didn't need a little brat to care after, because I could barely fend for myself.

But when you're eternal, you get to mull over things, and miss the things you can never have.

It happens to a lot of us. A lot of us female vampires, us _girls._ Drives some crazy and they grab an infant right out of the cradle, and turn it, and then...

And then all hell breaks loose when the baby doesn't control itself and does something that's seen, and they don't know, they don't care, but that gets noticed, and talked about, and then ...

And then the Volturi come, and clean up the messes the 'mother' couldn't hide. Taking out even whole towns of humans to squelch the rumour aborning, and then turning on the mother and child to destroy them for the messes they made.

That's a rule. No vampire-children. Period.

But it doesn't stop the longing in the chest. It doesn't stop the hurt inside for us women when we see a mother beholding the baby in her arms, or see a child holding onto her parents' arms, and ...

And Bella was such a big baby, and that was so annoying, so I wanted not only to let her go, but to shove her away from me and tell her take responsibility for herself, and to get a fucking backbone, for the Love of God!

I didn't want to keep holding her, a babe in my arms.

That's what I told myself.

I let her go.

She pulled back and sniffled, and used her palm to rub her tear-streaked eyes, and her forearm did a quick swipe across her nose.

I shoved her off my lap, and her butt fell onto the soft earth behind her.

"Oh!" she said surprised, as her ass hit the ground, then her momentum bowled her over, back down into the dirt.

Fuck. Her 'oh's.

Now I was the one who looked away.

An animal whines when it's being hunted. It cries out, to alert the others in the herd to flee the predator. The others get away. It doesn't. Because its cry is a cry of weakness, letting the predator know that it will be an easy kill.

Self-sacrificial.

Humans cry out, just like herd animals, but they don't know why they are doing it. They cry out for help, or so they think, but the primitive response is to cry out to alert the others.

And to let the predator know this: easy kill.

I swallowed hard, and did not look at her.

Little Bella, lying in the dirt, so helpless ... if I so much as looked at her now, she would be dead before she knew it.

"Go," I ordered harshly, waving toward the bathing room made from cinder blocks and glass bricks. "Clean yourself up, and come right back here, or ..."

I managed a glance at her, she was just picking herself up.

"... did you need an escort?" I asked.

"Huh?" she looked at me blearily.

_Fuck._ She needed an escort.

I sighed, rose, picked her up by her shirt collar — _"Hey!"_ she yelped, registering her complaint and surprise — and dragged her sorry ass to the bathroom.

...

I watched Bella as she washed her hands and then her face. She lifted up her hair and put cool water on the nape of her neck.

She was careful and delicate... feminine. Why should she be otherwise. She stood from the sink, regarding me from the mirror.

"Did you want to ta-..." she began.

"Outside," I responded curtly.

Talking over things in the bathroom? Where were her manners?

We went outside. Bella cringed as she passed me at the entranceway.

What? Did she think I was going to hit or something? What would ever give her that impression?

I mean, besides the pissed-off look I had on my face.

_Talk in the bathroom, indeed!_ I thought, rancor blackening my thoughts to pitch.

...

"So, didju..." Bella began nervously.

She couldn't stand silence. It was the anticipation that was killing her. I could be smacking her around the forest, and she'd be more relieved than she were now.

I'd have to remember that for later.

I held up my hand. "Bella," I said, "sit."

She sat.

Is it possible for someone to sink to the ground nervously?

Bella sank to the ground _nervously,_ her every muscle tensed, ready for my attack.

I can't say I blame her, but goodness, woman! her tension was going to eat her from the inside out if she didn't develop a coping mechanism, and soon.

It was really simple: do everything I said, the moment I said it, and just like I wanted her ... what could be so hard about that?

I smirked, and sank to the ground, showing her what grace, power, and limitless self-control looked like.

The lesson wasn't wasted on her. She watched me, awed.

I regarded her levelly. "No," I said finally, "I did not want to talk now."

"Oh," she said, surprised.

She needed a smack. Instead of listening in silence, she was responding to me.

I've already told her I don't need her response. I need her attention.

I didn't need that, either, but I'd surely get it.

I looked down at my hand-not-smacking her, then looked back up at her.

"What I want," I said, "is your payment." Bella blinked. "Then I want you to finish what you started," I indicated the outline of the grave she had taken an hour to start.

"Each thing in its order," I said, and looked at her significantly.

Did she get it?

It didn't look like she got it. _Integrity_ was a foreign term to her. You finish what you start. You work on one thing to completion, and, if interrupted, you leave your task letting the others affected by what you were doing how far along you were and when you expected to return to your task to complete it.

Did anybody do that these days? ... At all?

I glared at her.

Bella blinked, processing what I said to her. "Okay," she said quickly, obediently.

I grimaced. _"'Okay,'_ huh?" I said scathingly.

Now it was Bella's turn to flinch. "Oops!" she said, wincing, and added quickly. "Sorry!"

My grimace turned to a smirk. _"'Sorry,'_ huh?"

Bella gasped. "Oh! Sor-..."

Then she swallowed hard, and blushed crimson-red, waving her hands helplessly. "What do I say!" she wailed in desperation, then cast her eyes to the ground and whispered forlornly: "I don't know what to say! I can't say anything right!"

My smirk stayed on my face. Maybe she could get it, after all, even if she didn't realize what she was getting.

"Bella," I said not unkindly, "c'mer."

She looked up at me from under her bangs, and scooted along the ground until her knees were almost touching my knees.

I leaned forward quickly and wrapped her in my arms, pulling her onto my lap.

_"Eep!"_ she squeaked, the little brown field-mouse.

I rested my chin on her shoulder. "Yes," I said, "when you can say nothing right, then what should you say?"

Her flicked out and touched the corner of her lips. She was blushing a pale pink. "Nothing, I guess," she hazarded.

I sighed a soft exasperated sigh into her ear. "You ... _'guess'?"_

"Oops! Sorry!" she said quickly. Then realizing that mistake, she stiffened up. "I mean ... um ..."

Then the wind left her sails, and she hung her head. "I'll shut up now," she whispered sadly.

_That would be a first! _I thought wryly.

Then I thought... What the hell. Maybe she would shut up. I rested my chin on her shoulder again and admired her face in profile.

...

"Uh..." Bella began, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

_"Shh!"_ I shushed her.

For being alone, and lonely for the past two months, I was enjoying this silence _way_ too much, like a wicked, guilty pleasure.

"Oh," she said, then, biting her lip, went back to look straight ahead, so I could admire her in profile again.

I breathed out a long, languorous breath, and she breathed me in, deeply, sighing, squirming slightly.

...

Vampires can be still.

Forever.

Humans cannot, it seems.

Little squirmy thing. She _tried_ to be still, for my sake, for my pleasure, and I appreciated her efforts — I did! — but there is a difference between _trying_ to be still, and being still. Do you understand me?

This little one did not. She tried. She tried for everything she did; she was a little tryer.

That's why she failed so consistently.

I sighed, semi-contentedly, and lifted my chin off her hot, little shoulder.

"Well," I said, "that's one-half of the payment for the water."

Bella glanced at me at that, surprised. "Really?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Oh," she said, blinking.

_"'Oh'?"_ I mimicked her surprised tone. "Wherefore 'oh'?"

She blinked at that.

I rolled my eyes.

"Why do you say 'oh,' Bella?" I translated for her.

"Well," she said. "I just thought ..." She gave me a sidelong glance. "I'm just surprised, is all." She amended quickly.

"I gathered that," I said dryly.

Bella looked down at her hands. "You're really weird," she said.

"What do you mean?" I demanded sharply.

_Imagine that!_ I thought, put out, _Bella Swan's weird calling me weird! Where does she get the gumption to do that?_

Bella twisted her hands in her lap. "You're like ..." She paused, considering her words. "Cruel, one second, caring the next, and then sometimes," she said, peeking at me, "you're like ... both at the same time."

She added quickly, thoughtfully. "Like now. You just ... sat with me, and that was all, but other times, there's nothing I can do and you're like ... on fire, or something."

She looked down at her hands. "I just don't get you."

I chuckled.

She didn't 'get' me, but I 'got' her, all right.

"Trying to 'get' me, are you?" I asked primly.

She shrugged. "Yeah."

"How's that working for you?" I pressed gently.

She shrugged again.

"Mmhm," I said, quite pleased now. She called me 'weird' because she didn't 'get' me.

I found this all quite amusing.

Bella bit her lip in the silence of me regarding her.

"So," she said, glancing at me carefully, "w-what was the other half of the payment?"

She wasn't looking at me when she said these words, and then she started to blush again, in shyness, perhaps regretting the compulsion that made her ask this question.

But she wouldn't look at me.

I put my hand gently under her chin, a feather touch, but in its lightness, an assured strength.

I lifted her chin so that she was facing me, and now she had to look at me, or she would look foolish trying not to look at me.

Her eyes darted to my solemn face, then darted away, but, eventually, they had to look at me, as they rested on me.

Her blush began to heat her face as she looked at me full on.

"Kiss me," I said.

She blinked, hearing it, but not hearing it.

"Uh ..." she stuttered, "... what?"


	12. That Went Well

**Chapter summary: **You ever want to hit somebody, no: hurt somebody, so badly, that you just ... did. And when you did, ... you didn't feel better, seeing her hurt, did you? You felt the worse for it, didn't you? Didn't you! God, I hate her so much.

* * *

"You heard me," I said coolly. "Kiss me."

Bella looked exactly like a cornered animal, or, exactly like her _not_ going to honour my price for the water she so greedily suck down, given to her by my own hand.

She looked exactly like that.

"Uh ... uh ..." she stuttered, looking everywhere but at me.

"Bella," I said, "you promised."

My voice was just as cool as before, but I was losing patience, and we both could hear it boiling beneath the cool surface of my voice.

That annoyed me, that she was irritating me. Why would she irritate me? Why would she be getting to me, the little shit?

Bella bit her lip, but she stilled, somewhat, even though she still wouldn't look at me.

"I promised," she admitted in a regretful whisper.

She had promised. And that meant something to her.

It meant something to her. A promise.

Oh. If a vampire ever promises you anything? Your life if you do something? The life of your mother, say, if you give yourself up?

Don't listen. Run if you can. A vampire's promise isn't worth the air used to say it. A vampire's promise is as good for as long as the illusion, the lie, holds, and when the game's up ...

Well ...

Bella Swan turned herself over to James to save her mother's life. If James had had her mother in actuality, she would've been colder than the ground he put her in when Bella arrived to save her.

Stupid little shits and their stupid little promises.

But this little one, her promise meant something to her. And I intended to make good use of that.

"Willingly," I reminded her.

She nodded slowly, shamefacedly.

I smirked. God, this was so good, bending her will to mine. I _loved_ this.

"Well, then," I said easily, closing my eyes, leaning forward, ever so slightly, puckering my lips.

And I waited.

The very air stilled, then trembled in sympathy of this moment, her, so scared, but so bound by her sense of honour.

And I thought this generation had no honour, no dignity, no integrity.

This little one was proving me ...

The slightest hint of a movement, suspended in time, and my little brown-haired, brown-eyed Bella Swan flashed forward, and ...

I felt the feather-touch of her lips on my cheek, and then she flashed away before I knew what had hit me.

And then it hit me.

This was her kiss.

I kept my eyes closed, then pressed them closed harder still, in disbelief, and I felt my head tilt to the side, and a thoughtful hum escaped my lips, no longer puckered to receive her kiss, but now firmly pressed together.

"Hmm," I said.

I did not grind my teeth together, but I opened my eyes to regard this one who just did this to me.

If she had come forward and struck me across the face with the palm of her hand, I think I would have hurt less, inside, than what I did now. I think I might have respected her more for that.

I regarded her coolly, expecting her smug, triumphant look. She had weaseled out what I wanted her to do, by doing exactly what she promised she would.

And exactly no more.

Instead, I saw a scared, little girl, partially defiant, partially terrified, expecting my rage and wrath.

"Hm," I said again, pursing my lips.

"I kissed you!" she blurted out quickly. "I did!"

I regarded her for two full seconds, and I smacked my lips.

I had to swallow the accumulated venom, burning my mouth.

"Yes," I said slowly. "Yes, you did. You kept your promise."

"I did!" She said petulantly.

This one. A child. She had to be right.

Even when being right was the very most wrong thing she could be.

"Yes, you did," I said. "No tribunal nor King's court would find you in breach of your honourable word, now would they?"

"Well," she said hotly, glaring at me.

But then the wind left her sails. "Well, yes," she said weakly, shifting from foot to foot, as if she knew she didn't have a leg to stand on.

"Hm," I said, noncommittally. Then I looked at her, hard. "Tell me," I said, "if you had to stand before tribunal to prove you kissed me, and kept your word, ever, would that ..."

I broke off.

God, somehow my gut hurt, but I felt _nothing_ inside.

"What kind of kiss would that be?" I demanded of her.

She looked back at me, sullenly, then broke off and looked away.

I looked at her, a lone, forlorn girl, her victory curtailed and now bitter.

"Why did you do this to me?" I whispered.

She glanced at me quickly and looked away.

I shook my head, and my shock turned first to sorrow, then bitterness, then fury: hot, blood-boiling fury. I felt my chin quivering, but I was not going to cry. I could not, for I had no tear ducts.

My chin, and my body, was quivering not with sadness, but with rage.

"God," I spat. "God! I just so want to smack the living ..."

"Do it!" she flared, furious at me back.

_Ka-thwack!_

Okay.

In my defense.

I didn't hit her.

Really. I didn't.

The tree hit her.

I just pushed her.

A bit.

A bit hard.

A bit too hard.

I think I lost it a bit, is all.

In my defense.

Bella stood upright, pressed up against the tree still by the momentum that flung her back so hard and so fast she would have done justice to a fast ball thrown by an American Cricketer ... what did they call it? 'Base-ball.'

Baseball.

The tree itself shook from the force of the blow of her hitting it.

She looked not at me, but at nothing and nowhere, her face pure white, and she registered absolute shock.

Then she crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

_Thump!_ went her body, and she lay still, face down in the dirt, unmoving.

I walked up to her form, barely twitching on the ground, and as I approach her, she took in a ragged breath, her first, then her body was wracked by a spasm of coughing, and, in the air, something smelled ... off. Something wrong, but something o-so-right!

I knew this smell.

I carefully turned her over with my foot, standing aloof from her.

Her face was splattered with dirt, ... and blood. She was drooling phlegm tainted with blood, and her cheeks and nose were patterned with spit and blood.

_Uh, huh. Perfect. _I thought, realizing how _hungry_ I was.

And ... I could dine right now, without even thinking. So I had to think, hard, to stay present in the now, and not lose myself to my hunger.

I was not done playing with this one, and I was _not_ going to give her a quick release, particularly after that little stunt she just pulled.

_"Why_ did you do this thing?" I said. I sat down by her crumpled form and wiped her cheek.

I looked at my finger critically.

No.

With regret, I wiped her spit mingled with her sweet, sweet blood back into the dirt, where it belonged.

Where she belonged.

But if I knew that if I gave in to this one little temptation, and tasted the goodness I smelled, it would be over for her in no time at all.

For her, she saw none of my struggle, nor of my strength to contain myself, she was just so wrapped up in her hurt. Her internal organs were indeed jarred, but her lungs, her kidneys, her liver, they were not punctured.

She was hurt, badly, but she would live.

At present.

I didn't know if I should delight in this.

I turned her besmirched head toward me.

_"Why?" _I snarled softly.

She made to respond, but then the wracking cough overcame her again, and blood and spit flew out of her mouth at over her and me.

I ignored this as best I could. It's a lot harder than you think: the bloodlust is nearly all-consuming when it hits.

As it always does.

But she was just so fragile.

And she thought she would get away with this shit?

Stupid little fuck.

She coughed again, weakly, pained: her own coughing fit hurt her. Then she tried to speak.

"Y-youhhhh," she coughed again.

I waited.

"You're naked," she said, "n-n-and, if-if I ... I was scared you were gonna try to get in my pants!"

The last she exclaimed with force and fear.

I looked down at her, and shook my head, laughing softly at her little fears.

"I was going to try to ..." I repeated in disbelief. I closed my eyes for a second then opened them, looking at her.

And she thought by darting in and then darting away she could avoid the dire consequences of me getting into her pants?

Oh, the horror!

Am I that terrifying?

Well, yes, I am, but that's entirely beside the point!

I glared down at her, bottling up my anger. "Let me tell you something," I said slowly. "Let me tell you the last time I was kissed with any warmth or affection."

I smiled faintly down at her, and recounted the many-many suns that I had see make its course across the sky.

She looked up at me expectantly.

I looked right into her eyes.

"Never," I said.

And I dropped her head down on the ground.

"Ow," she said weakly, and coughed, but the realization of what she had just done to me was starting to dawn on her.

I stood, towering over her.

"So," I said coolly, "this is the consequence of your little stunt, Bella: I'm going to find somebody, and I'm going kill them, but before I do, I'm going to ask them their name. Just so you ..."

"No," she said shocked, her face ashen.

I leaned over her, smirking. "Just so you know who it was you killed." I continued mercilessly.

"No!" she said, panicking. "Don't! Please! I did this! This is my fault! Kill me, don't k-..."

I picked her up by her shoulders, my face inches from hers.

"Say you're sorry!" I snarled.

"Oh, God, Victoria!" she wailed. "I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry! Please! Don't..."

_"Kiss me!" _I snarled.

She looked at me, utterly terrified, and tentatively reached for me.

_"NOW!" _I screamed in her face.

She blanched, but wrapped her hands around my head, and pressed her lips to mine.

I _reveled _in her kiss! Her trembling lips were so soft and warm, and she gave herself to me in terror, withholding all of herself, afraid of what I might do to her in the kiss, but pressing herself to me, afraid of what I might do if she didn't.

Her kiss was weak, tentative, scared, ... but it was a kiss.

A start of one.

Grasping her shoulders firmly, I broke the kiss.

My eyes narrowed at hers. "Thank you," I said coldly. "Is that your best?"

"I-... I-..." she stuttered. "Y-yes! Yes, please, Victoria! Yes!"

"Is that what I wanted?" I ask. "Just a kiss?"

"I ..." she said, terrified.

She didn't know what to say, scared of what either answer might bring from me.

"Yes," I answered for her, "it was." I said. "I wanted a kiss. Why didn't you just give me what I wanted!"

"Dt-t-t-t-t-t..." two tears streamed down her ravaged face.

"Are you sorry now, Bella?" I demanded.

"Yes!" she cried. "Yes! I am. God! I'm so ..."

I shoved her down onto the hard ground. The air left her body in a whoosh.

"No," I said menacingly, "but you will be."

And as I left her lying there, I called over my shoulder: "Murderer!"

She gasped once, hard. Then twice. _"NO!"_ she screamed into the forest, for I was gone.

_"No!" _her voice now fading in the forest behind me. _"Please!"_ she cried, _"kill me! Please! Not somebody else! Please!"_

That was the last I heard of her voice, for now I was more than a mile away from the sniveling mess of a girl who disobeyed me.

And that was the last I thought of her, really, for now I was pure animal, pure predator.

I was on the hunt.

You see, that blood? If I had stayed, I would've killed her. I had to kill somebody, and now. But not her. Not now.

I didn't want to do that. Not just yet. She needed to suffer.

A lot.

Now, ... who was going to pay for her mistake?

* * *

**Next chapter: **An innocent dies, so the guilty might live ... to regret it.

**A/N: **In the previous chapter Victoria said she was having fun. This chapter ... I don't think she was having all that much fun.

The thing is, you can piss off a vampire, but then somebody pays for that, and that 'somebody' may not be you. At first.

_`phfina shudders and then crawls under her down comforter and hides._


	13. Cell Phone

**Chapter summary: **Awww, look at the poor teenage girl wandering the forest by herself because she needs some time alone. Awww. Poor thing!

* * *

I found her, my prey, a few miles, a few minutes from where I left Bella.

They were always so easy to find, my victims. They simply separated themselves from the throng, the mass of humanity, to be alone, to be by themselves.

To die. To give themselves to me. An offering.

I watched this one from every angle. She had no idea she was being stalked, hunted.

She was a young girl, in her teens, I estimated — the trying age ... the perfect age, for me.

She was ...

Okay. I must ask this: why do I see Bella Swan everywhere now? This one was a brunette with long, brown hair, pale skin which offset her deep brown eyes. Her eyes were reddened, irritated with angry tears which she occasionally wiped away in annoyance, and she stomped through the forest making every kind of sound to broadcast her presence.

_'Come find me; I am here.'_ I could hear her 'call' more than a mile away.

So easy to find and kill.

"Stupid, fucking ..." she murmured angrily, sniffled and wiped her face again with her shirt-sleeve.

She was dressed well: leather hiking shoes, new, I saw, blue jeans form-fitted to her slighter frame, an under-shirt that extended below her natural-olive sweater.

A beautiful girl, blossoming into womanhood, past the awkward age now, so she was maturing past baby-fat cute and mellowing into beautiful.

A real catch.

Good enough to eat.

She paused, and I paused, too, wondering if she sensed me. She wiped her face quickly, pulled something out of her pocket that was not metal and flipped it open.

"Fuck," she spat, closed it up, put it back into her pocket and continued on, but the anger was burning low and now she wandered ahead listlessly.

Time to play.

"Why do you cry, little one?" I asked.

She gasped and turned around quickly.

I was not there anymore.

She looked all around her, but she saw nothing, of course.

"Hello?" she called out tentatively.

Fear crossed her face, and she turned from where she was headed toward, and began to retrace her steps, returning from whence she came.

Which was to hell.

"Is that way toward safety?" I asked to her left.

Her head, her whole body whipped around to the sound of my voice.

"Or was it in this direction?" I said, directly behind her.

She spun around so fast that her hair tangled itself in the bracken. She ignored this looking hard, but seeing nothing.

She was breathing hard, but she was meticulous, scanning then entire area in front of her, then broadening her focus, wider and wider, looking for her antagonist.

This one was good, I judged, for she didn't panic, no: in fact, as she freed her hair from the flora, she kept her eyes focused, probing into the forest depths, and she kept her cool.

"I'll have you know," she called out strongly, just the slightest tremble in her voice, "that I'm a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and I will so fuck you up if you're thinking about doing anything, you hear me?"

I tilted my head to the side, regarding her from my vantage point.

"What's Tae Kwon Do?" I asked, curious.

"You come out here and face me, and I'll show you!" she said, her weight low to the ground, her eyes scanning left-and-right, left-and-right.

She looked like ... nothing. No threat whatsoever. Another American teenage girl, harmless, defenseless, trapped, cornered, and ready and willing to fight for her life.

Like it did anything for all the others against me, against James, against any assailant.

Americans. All talk, all bluster, but nothing else: in the end, boorish and boring.

But she did have that calm to her I had not seen. Others ran in terror, this one was scared, no doubt; I could smell her fear in the air, but she had a confidence to her the others lacked. And she had a funny way of holding herself; she seemed to have a solidity to her that belied her frame. She was ready to fight, but she did not look reckless.

Hm. Interesting.

"Okay," I said easily, "I will."

I alighted from my perch, twenty feet above her, tore off a branch as I passed it, missiling toward the ground, then threw it. It flew, then connected with her shoulder blade, piercing it, and flew on, carrying her four feet to slam into a tree where the point of my rudimentary spear embedded itself deeply into the trunk of the tree, pinning her against it.

She howled in shock and then agony, screaming and screaming and screaming.

I walked slowly up behind her, covering her eyes with one hand, and muffling her screams with the other.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh," I cooed. "Hush now, sweetie. Hush."

She continued to scream into my hand.

"Hush now," I said. "Can you hush, little one?"

"Ihhh hurrrrsssszz!" she wailed.

"Yes," I cooed soothingly, "it hurts. It hurts a lot, but can you hush yourself, little one, or do I crush your throat now and hush you for you?"

"Ahaaaa!" she wailed, "Ahaaaa! Ahaaaaaaah!"

She sniffled, and cried out, moaning, then bore down, whimpering into my hand.

"Good girl," I said, pleased. "Good girl! Will you be silent if I remove my hand? Can you not cry out? Can you, little one?"

She sniffled, once, twice, then sniffled and swallowed hard. "Uhh!" she moaned.

I smirked and carefully removed my hand from her mouth.

She was panting hard, gasping at each breath. "Oohh! Oooh! Oh, God! It hurts," she whimpered.

"Yes," I said.

She tried to focus. I saw it was hard for her, intoxicated by pain, but she tried. "Who are you?" she demanded.

I put my hand to her cheek; it burned, even though she was slipping into shock, and she shuddered at the cold of my touch.

"Shh, shh, dear," I said. "I am Death, little one."

"Uh?" she gasped.

It was always this way. They ask questions, and when I bother to give an honest answer, they just don't believe it.

It made the whole dialogue tiresome after a decade or so.

I've had centuries to be tired of it.

I smirked.

"Tae Kwon Do, hm?" I said, unimpressed. "Was this what you were going to show me?"

"Ahhhmmm!" she whined.

"Uh, huh," I said. "The way I see it, you are in quite a pickle. You can either die, bleeding out, hanging on this tree, and ... well, I don't know how long you'll last, but it took Jesus three hours hanging on the cross, and I know from personal experience that every moment was _excruciating. _Or, I could kill you quickly, and every second will burn with an agony brighter than the Sun itself, or ..."

"O-or?" she asked, twitching, each movement a lightning bolt of agony centring on her shoulder.

I smiled. "Or we can play a game to pass the time, little one"

"W-what game?" she said.

"What other game can we play now?" I asked. "Twenty questions. I will ask the questions and you will give the answers. What do you say?"

"What choice do I have!" she spat angrily.

I smiled. "Ah," I said. "Wrong answer. And here's what happens when I don't like what I hear."

I took the branch into my hand, and I twisted it, corkscrewing it deeper into the trunk, and as I twisted, I tilted the branch higher and higher, forcing the girl off her feet, so that she was eventually on tiptoe, trying to keep her weight off the branch.

"What did I say about the screaming?" I asked coldly as I twisted the branch, tilting it even higher.

Because, of course, she was screaming her head off, she could do nought else.

She screamed and screamed, the poor, poor child.

I twisted the branch one more quarter-turn. Now her weight was fully on the branch, her toes barely providing any support.

...

It took a while, but eventually her screams ran their course.

"So," I said.

She moaned weakly.

I smirked.

"So," I said again. "Twenty questions."

"O-okay..." she whimpered, her eyes fighting to remain focused.

I blew out an angry sigh.

Did I need to smack the shit out of every human being I came across?

I chuckled at my own anger. This one didn't even know how much she had just pissed me off, the innocent.

It was actually rather cute.

"So," I said, glaring at her. She saw my passing anger and wondered at it. "First off, what's your name?"

"Bella," she said.

I blinked.

The next thing I knew of myself, I was sitting on the ground, laughing into my hands, because I could not hold my head up. I laughed. I laughed so hard that it took over my body, and I just gave myself over to my laughter, and threw my head back and laughed with joy and rage and sadness. O, the irony of it all!

God was a jokester, and He was having fun with me today, wasn't he?

...

"What's so God-damn funny!" the little girl in front of me could no longer stand it.

I unfolded myself from my seated position and came up to the stick.

"Ah, ah, ah!" I said, "I get to ask the questions, little Bella!"

And I took the branch into my hands...

"No!" the girl-named-Bella screamed.

And I twisted the branch.

Can you scream over your own scream? My little new-found friend found that she could.

But my twisting actually lowered the tilt on the stick, so that her feet could now rest on the ground. I did this intentionally. She wouldn't've lasted long on her tiptoes, and as she yielded to gravity, she'd tear her own shoulder off.

Fun to watch for a few seconds, I supposed, but now I needed more from this little one than a few seconds of torture.

"There!" I said, pleased.

The movement irritated the wound, and blood spurted from it afresh as she howled in agony.

"Hm," I said. "You aren't going to last much longer, are you, little one?"

I didn't wait for an answer, so, technically, this wasn't one of the twenty questions.

Didn't matter. She wouldn't last all twenty questions, anyway.

Nobody ever did.

I ripped her bloodied, pierced shirt out from under her sweater and used it as a compress, pushing it into the wound itself. It probably hurt like hell, but it did staunch the flow of blood.

So she's last a bit longer, anyway.

"So, Bella," I said, and I laughed gaily, anew.

I sighed happily. "Forgive me, little one, but the irony is just too much," I said. "You see, I came here to kill somebody now, and here you are, and that your name is Bella is a delight just too sweet to bear."

Bella gazed at me stupidly, confused and in shock.

"The irony escapes you, I see, my dear," I said lightly. "It's just that I just left a poor girl, nearly twice your age, I esteem ... how old are you, again?"

"S-sixteen," she said, blinking dully at me.

"Ah, yes, sixteen. I thought so. Not yet ten and seven, then, yes?"

She blinked stupidly at me.

"Let me tell you a secret, little one," I said, and I leaned into her and whispered into her ear. "I was not yet a year older than you when they tied me to a tree thus, my hands tied above my head, and then they flayed the flesh off my back with five hundred lashes with the cat." I smiled. "Or they would have, but they stopped around lash ... hm, fifty-seven? fifty-eight? I lost count."

Little Bella looked at me from her stupor. "Why did they stop?"

I chuckled. "Oh, that's when I died."

Bella blinked at me, focused, and unfocused.

"So, sixteen, hm? Well, I left a girl just now, not twice your age, saying I'd kill somebody, and here you are, and your name is 'Bella'! Fancy that!"

"W-why is that fancy?" she asked, and licked her dried lips and tried to swallow.

"Well," I said, chuckling. "I picked her out because she looks exactly like the girl who destroyed everything I have, and do you know what that girl's name is, hm, little Bella?"

She tried to swallow, open-mouthed. "I guess I can guess," she said.

I smiled widely. "I wager you can!" and I giggled delightedly.

"So," I continued. "Why did you choose to deliver yourself right into my hands, little one?"

Bella puzzled over my question for a moment.

"I don't understand," she admitted after her eventual capitulation.

"You didn't come out into this forest on your own, did you, little one? Where are your parents?" I said.

"Oh," she said. "They're back at the campsite," and she jerked her chin back in the direction from whence she came.

"And you wandered off on your own for what reason? You like this forest?" I asked.

"Huh? No. Fuck no. I ... aaaaiiiiEEEEE!"

She broke off her answer because I took the branch in my hand and twisted it again, lifting her back up onto the balls of her feet.

"Language, little one." I said. "Your utterances are unbecoming and unwelcome."

"Ooooh! God!" she cried. "Oh, my God! It hurts!"

"Yes," I said. "It hurts, and it will hurt more when you displease me. Do you understand?"

"Oww! God! Yes!" she whimpered.

"Good girl!" I said encouragingly, twisting the branch again. She screamed as I lowered her back to her feet.

"Now!" I said, "let's see if you can answer the questions I put to you appropriately, hm?"

"Okay! Okay! O-aaaoooooww!" she howled.

"Oh, and don't say the word, 'okay,' as I hate it, hm?" I added, twisting the branch a quarter turn.

"Oh ...uh .. um ... ah...?" she stuttered her non-answer.

The poor thing! Take away one non-word from her, and she became as mute.

"So," I said, pertly, "Bella-who's-sixteen, why were you alone in this forest, then?"

"Why am I out here at all!" she cried. "I mean, like, _Labor Day?_ And my dad takes the fam out to the park for family bonding time?"

"Ah," I said, "so you're out here with your family."

"Yeah," she said bitterly, "the whole family, Mom, Dad, the sister-wives and their kids, too! Jesus!"

That gave me pause. "'Sister-wives'?" I said.

She rested her head against the tree, closing her eyes for a second. "Yeah," she said resignedly. "Lemme guess: you're not from Utah, are you?"

"Yes," I said, "you guessed correctly; I'm not from Utah. So, your father married your mother and her sisters?"

"No," she said, "it's the term for, you know, when a man has multiple wives, they all become like sisters to each other."

"Ah," I said. "I thought Christianity had wiped out the practice of polygamy."

"Not in Utah, it hasn't," she remarked sourly.

"Ah," I said. "So you were out here alone to get away from your family."

"Yeah, family," she said, "and my dad making more family with his new wife. God! She's almost my age, for fuck's sake!"

I rested my hand on the branch, and my touch sent a vibration through it into her body, radiating throughout her back and shoulder. I saw the pain enter her as her body tensed around it.

"Ow!" she bleated.

"Language," I reminded her.

"Yeah," she said sadly, and a tear trickled down her cheek. "You sound just like my parents, you know?" She shook her head. "I leave the campsite to get away from them, and I end up here with you, and you're as bad as them! And now you're gonna kill me, too! Just my luck, you know?"

"Your luck, or your choice?" I said archly.

She looked back at me for a second. "Yeah," she said bitterly, "I take it back: you're worst'n them."

I smirked at that. "Thank you," I said primly.

'Teenagers' were always trying to be different, to be 'cool,' as they called it these days. In my day, there was no such thing as 'teeners' or 'teenagers.' You were born, you worked, you bore children, and you died, if you were 'lucky' as this one said, at the ripe, old age of forty. Oftentimes, the 'working' and the 'bearing children' part were skipped: many children died as infants, and for that matter, many mothers died bearing them.

There was no 'being cool' or going of to be by yourself or to 'find yourself,' whatever that meant.

"So, you wandered off on your own to get away. How long have you been away?" I said.

She shrugged. "Oww!" ... or tried to. "'Bout an hour, I guess."

"An hour," I said. "They're not missing you?"

"Dunno," she said. "Don't care."

She looked hard at me. "Look! I live in f-..." She paused, glancing fearfully at me, and swallowed. "I live in Rocky Ridge, Utah. You know what you can do in Rocky Ridge, Utah? Nothing! _Then_ they take me here and there's no cell service, so I can't even text my friends. I'm, like, living in hell! And all I want to do is get the hell out, go to somewhere else, like, _far_ away, maybe on the Coast, but no! my parents have already picked out a husband for me! So, guess what? I get to be like Mom: a good, little domestic housewife, in charge of all the other sister-wives and watch my husband do it with them after he's all done with me, isn't that grand?"

"My, my!" I exclaimed. "Quite the passionate one, are we?"

She glared at me, but then she dropped her eyes, her chin trembling. "Yeah," she muttered, deflated. "Mom uses other words."

She sniffled.

"It sounds like I'll be doing you a favour, ending your life, if this is all you had to look forward to," I remarked critically.

She sniffled again. "Yeah," she said, "s-suppose so. I-I k-kinda had other plans, but ..."

Bitter tears fell from her eyes as she closed them, resting her head against the tree.

The fight left her as she relaxed into her agony, accepting the pain and her fate.

"What were your other plans?" I asked softly.

"Dunno," she said. "Something. Anything. Just get the hell out and go to College and do ... something. I don't know."

I shook my head. "That's the problem with this day and age. You are all about something, but you don't know what you are about, nor to what end. Your activities are trivial and useless. You are so busy, but you do nothing, you contribute nothing, waiting to be told what to do, then chafing against the stricture you place yourself under."

She opened her eyes at this, staring at me, wide-eyed.

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed at last, "that, right there, is exactly why when my dad asks if I want the lecture or the spanking, I take the spanking, every time!"

I chuckled. "Are my words true or not true?"

"Jesus Christ!" she spat quietly, closing her eyes again, and resting her head on the tree. "Please, just kill me now; I swear to God!"

I smirked, "No."

She opened her eyes at that and regarded me for a second.

"You're naked," she said, and closed her eyes, sighing.

Then she chuckled, a weak, sad little chuckle, wincing with the pain that her laughter caused.

"Can I tell you a joke?" she asked.

I blinked. "Now, that would be a first," I answered, a bit surprised.

No food had ever engaged with me like this.

She snorted. "Well, don't get all excited," she said, "but here goes. So, there's this masochist, right, and she says to the sadist: 'Oh, hurt me!'"

The girl moaned her plea to be hurt weakly and coughed once.

"And the sadist says," she continued, "get this, the sadist says, _'No!'"_

She laughed a little then sighed again, resting her head on the tree.

"It was a good joke," I said admiringly.

"Yeah," she said bitterly, not opening her eyes, "and you're laughing so hard at it, too."

She shivered.

"Cold," she complained faintly.

I put my hand to her cheek.

"You're colder," she remarked drily.

"Yes," I said.

"I'm dying," she said. Then after a second she added, "aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," I said.

"And it's just because I had to be alone for a while, just to think and be by myself, and that's some terrible crime?" she demanded, gathering as much strength as she could muster to put a bit of force into her accusation.

"The strong prey on the weak," I said. "That is the way of the world."

Her brow clouded at being called 'weak,' but she protested no further.

"And you're just gonna watch me die?" she demanded.

"Actually," I said, "I usually would've killed you much sooner than now, but I found you intriguing. Sometimes I play with my prey, sometimes I kill them right away, but none have engaged me like you have. And your name being 'Bella' didn't help your cause for a quick death."

"Well," she said sarcastically, "aren't I just special!"

"Everybody likes to think they are," I said.

"But they're not, huh?" she supplied.

"Not when I've killed them," I answered for her.

"What's stopping you now with me?" she asked.

"So eager, are we?" I demanded.

"Sadist!" she accused angrily.

I chucked at that.

"Bella," I said, tasting her name on my tongue. "Your last name wouldn't be ..."

I felt I shouldn't slip here. You must never, ever slip, for your first slip is your last when you are eternal.

"What is your last name?" I amended.

"Endleman," she answered.

She was so easy answering me. Not at all like my Bella who fought me every step of the way. This one just answered, like she knew her answering didn't weaken who she was.

"'Endleman,'" I echoed, slightly disappointed. "Bella Endleman, are you special?"

She breathed slowly for a moment, considering what I said. "Not when you kill me," was her answer.

"Smart girl," I chuckled.

She smiled weakly.

"And you listen, too," I added. "That's rare."

She bowed her head in acknowledgement.

She didn't raise it, however.

"What was it that you wanted to do, more than anything, when you were a little girl?" I said.

"Dunno," she began, "I guess ..."

"Not good enough," I chided crisply.

Her eyes rolled under her closed lids. "Jesus!" she complained faintly, "sympathetic much?"

"No, actually," I said.

"I gathered!" she muttered sourly, then said no more.

"So, ..." I prompted.

"Well," she said. "When I was a little girl, I liked art. I wanted to paint and draw, you know? And travel the world and capture that on canvas, like van Gogh did, so everybody could see what I saw, and how I saw it, 'cause everybody just ... stays where they are, but the World's so big and ..." She paused, embarrassed, then continued. "And ... that. But that was just what I liked when I was a little girl, and besides, you can't make any money off that, anyway, so ... I guess I was planning to go into web design or something like that."

"'Web design'?" I shook my head.

Did spiders need help spinning their webs?

"You know," she said, "the Internet."

"The internet," I repeated.

She sighed, then her whole body sagged as she capitulated.

"Whatever," she said. "Doesn't matter now."

I regarded her levelly.

"What if it did?" I said.

"Sadist!" she snarled weakly. Her retort was full of venom and sadness, all wrapped up into that one word.

"You say that affectionately," I remarked, amused.

"Bullshit!" she spat back angrily.

"Ah, ah, ah!" I said, and I twisted the branch, lifting her higher.

She wailed, but there was nothing in it anymore. She had lost the fight for her life, and she knew this now.

"A-at least," she gasped, and swallowed, pain flashing across her face, "y-you l-listened to me ... I-I-I've never ha-had a conversation where somebody l-listened to me and didn't treat me like a ch-child wh-who doesn't know anything!"

She sniffled and swallowed hard again. I eased the branch down.

I smiled at her. "Bella, you are a child. And you do not know anything."

I said this, for this was the truth. A sixteen year old girl, from wherever-it-was whence she came? She had seen nothing of the world or life. She knew nothing, other than that she was unsatisfied with what she had and where she was, and if she were to go anywhere else in the world, she would see people exactly like her, unhappy with where they were and what they had. I know. I had seen them. And if they had just looked, they would see so many others who would kill, who would die, to be in their position: well-fed, trained in Tae Kwon Do, whatever that was, and texting their friends on their service.

If that is what they did with that little device of the hand.

Language was just so confusing these days: web designer? Texting? What is a 'texting'?

"Thanks for that," she said bitterly, and two tears fell.

I ignored her. "Here's what I'm going to do, little Bella Endleman." _Not Swan,_ I reminded myself. "This 'web design' sounds like you're settling for something. I do know know what it is, but I do know it is not you."

"So what?" she said. "What does it m-..."

"Hush now," I said.

I put my hand of her pierced shoulder. "This arm will never be the same again. If I were to return your to your family, this would be a handicap you would have to overcome if you were to become an artist."

She puzzled over what I said.

"Huh?" was all that she could come up with. "Look, that was just a kid's dream. Everybody wants to be something when they're kids, but then they grow up and they ... well, they have to face facts. You can't make money off artwork, or being a princess and riding a pony. You just have to ..."

She sniffled.

"...Give up?" I supplied.

"'Grow up' I was gonna say," she said.

"Well, you're not 'gonna' grow up." I said. "You're 'gonna' die now, or you're 'gonna' do something that you put your whole self into, and I'm 'gonna' come back some day. Not in three days. Not in three weeks. Maybe not in three years. But I shall return, and I will see what you've done, and see if it's something lasting, something eternal, something you."

"And it's _not_ going to be 'web design'!" I spat.

I did not know what this was. I just knew that it was probably like everything else these mortals did these days: going to work, coming home, going to work, and leaving nothing lasting.

"I don't understand," she said humbly. "What are you gonna do?"

I pondered for a second, then said softly, "I'm going to do something I've never done before, little Bella."

And I took the branch in my hand and twisted it, and twisted it, and twisted it, and as I twisted the branch, the poor, pinned child screamed and screamed and screamed, screaming out her last bit of strength.

And she was free.

Or, more correctly: free of the tree, for now she was in my arms, her head lolling off my shoulder, so I propped up her head, resting it in the crook of my neck.

Besides, I had to elevate her shoulder. I used my right hand to press the compress firmly into the wound, to staunch the flow of blood that had restarted with the movement.

The bloodflow was lazy and merely a trickle.

"Do _not," _I snarled angrily to her, "waste my effort."

I set off in the direction of her retracted steps. An hour in the forest? Perhaps her campsite was a mile away. Not far at all for me.

"Why are you doing this?" she whispered, her voice a lost thing in this ageless forest.

I frowned. "I don't know." I said curtly.

And that bothered me, exceedingly, for I did not know, and I always knew everything.

Or perhaps I did know, and recoiled at the knowledge.

I didn't know that, either. And that _really_ bothered me.

I frowned down at her. "You are welcome, by the way," I said.

"Oh," was her surprised answer. "Uh ... thank you?"

"Always be grateful for what you are given," I lectured. "Always be grateful for what you have, for, at any time, I can take it away from you, forever. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she whispered humbly.

"Then you will reconcile yourself to your father," I commanded.

"Jesus," she muttered petulantly, "you are one tough cookie, arencha?"

"Was that a 'yes'?" I demanded.

She sighed. "Yes. God. Yes, okay?"

I overlooked the 'okay' ... she didn't have the strength for me to correct her now.

"And you are going to give me this thing of your hand," I said.

"This ... what?" she said.

"This thing of your hand that you looked at, that you text your friends with," I said.

"My cell phone?" she asked surprised.

"Yes," I said.

"Why?" She was shocked.

"Because it is evil, and stupid, and trivial. It takes you out of the present, and you love it more than your family, and with your friends you are probably looking more at it, then being with them, aren't you?"

She had no answer. "Everybody has a cell phone," she fought back. "You can't ... do anything without one. You just can't get by."

"In the forest, it got you by when we crossed paths?" I said.

She was quiet.

"You will give me this thing, and you will not replace it with another," I said.

"O-okay," she said weakly and bit her lip. A tear fell.

"You cry over the loss of this thing of the hand?" I demanded harshly.

"No," she sniffled. "It's just that nobody's ever been so ... mean to me, so strict, and ... it's ... I don't know."

"Nobody's ever paid attention to you, have they?" I said.

She shook her head.

"Nor cared enough to do so," I added.

"You talk funny," she complained faintly.

I chuckled. "No, little one, you do. You just don't know that you do, do you?"

"That's alotta 'do's there," she said.

I laughed at that.

"And don't say 'okay,' anymore." I said.

"Okay," she said, then she giggled lightly.

She snuggled her head into my neck.

We were here.

It was a large family. There were sounds coming from the tent. Fucking. But there were several women and at least ten children ... no, twelve children at this one campsite.

The children were of various ages, and looked related.

And I saw the meaning of 'sister-wives.' The women were not sisters, but in looks, and ways, they were.

One child noticed me at the edge of their campsite and pointed. "Mommy, why is that girl naked?"

The woman looked, then screamed. _"Bella! Agatha, it's Bella! She's hurt!" _she shrieked.

I lowered the girl to the ground.

"Your cell phone," I said to her.

She fished it out of her jeans' pocket with her left hand and handed it to me.

"Here's the thing of my hand," she said, smirking at me, teasing and sweet.

She looked at me with the kind eyes of a new-found friend.

That's one way to get a human to like you, I supposed: spear them through their shoulder. That would be something I'd have to remember, if I ever wanted to have a human as a friend.

"And reconcile yourself to your father," I scolded.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes'm," she said.

"I'm serious!" I snarled.

"Me, too," she said weakly.

"What did you do to my Bella!" An older woman, in her mid-forties came up to us and was shouting at me. She was totally unconcerned with herself, or with me, or with who or what I was: she was pure heat and anger. I could almost see her protective nature extending itself around the child at our feet.

Her mother.

I straightened up and crushed this cell phone device in my hand, letting the pieces of it fall through my fingers down to the ground. The woman looked from my fingers, the pieces of Bella's cell phone falling to the ground and back up to me, totally undaunted by my display.

I decided I liked her: I liked her indomitable spirit, so like mine, in a way. So I guess I wouldn't put my fist through her face for her impertinence.

"This child has lost a lot of blood and will die if she is not brought to hospice right away," I said.

"Not a child!" Bella bleated softly.

"Bella, Bella, oh, my God! Bella!" A deep, strong, man's voice came from the campground.

Her father, I supposed.

I didn't look. I didn't want to see him. I didn't want to see his care and concern in his eyes which would look like hers.

I didn't want any of this.

You see, I have no memory of my own father. He died, strung up on a tree for poaching, or so my sister, Anne, had told me, and because he had died, we lived the rest of our lives in hardship, and then eventually in untimely death.

I hated him for what he did to me by dying. I hated all fathers, particularly the ones who lived and cared for their families. I didn't understand how a man could have and support several wives at once, but it looked like this one did.

If I looked up to see him, I would kill him.

... as was my way. Any good reflects the bad that I am, and so I hate it.

I hate it even more when good is taken for granted, or complained about.

I hate everything, basically.

That's what evil does, doesn't it? It hates the good.

And with that thought, I was gone.

"Wait ..." Bella called out weakly.

_'Wait,' _she had said. But I could not wait.

Death waits on no one.

...

Like an arrow loosed from the bow, I flew through the forest.

Like an arrow finds its target, I found them.

A couple, walking, 'hiking,' as it were, through the forest. I vectored in quickly. I crushed the woman's head with my fist as I passed her, and slammed the man against a tree, pinning him there, ripping open his throat and sucking him dry.

Sometimes, if the mood struck me, I would play, letting one go to run, screaming, and then have fun playing cat-and-mouse for a while.

The mood did not strike; I did. My mood was soured past curdling, and I had no time to delight in their screams or to be annoyed by their stupid questions and inane pleas.

After I finished the man, the woman's head had bled out; there wasn't much left to her, but what there was I squeezed out.

I was angry, and when I was angry, I gorged myself.

The hunt was nothing. The feeding was dissatisfying, and I was pissed.

I go back to Bella ... _my_ Bella now, I would put my fist through her face the first time she irritated me...

Which would be pretty much the second I saw her.

I sat by the bodies crumpled by me.

I said I would punish her with their names.

I didn't stop to ask their names. They didn't even know what hit them before they were dead.

I ripped the wallet right through the man's hiking shorts, and ripped the woman's fanny pack from her stilled body. They were bloodied. I was bloodied.

Perfect. I looked exactly how I felt: a bloody mess. I felt a feral smile rip itself across my face.

I buried them. I buried them deep.

That tidying-up took me all of forty-seven seconds.

_Forty-seven seconds, _I thought, furious. And how long was my little Bella lollygagging about for her own lover? It was pure laziness and disrespect, it was.

I was going to straighten that little fuck right out, if it were the last thing I did to her.

_Eheh_. My feral smirk returned to my lips.

...

This time, she stayed.

I found her exactly where I left her, sitting on the ground, looking sad, forlorn, and lost. I arced to her, stopping right in front of her.

She stared, shocked at my sudden appearance, and then her shock turned to shame when she saw the muddied blood dripping off me. She looked away, silenced and sallow (the Old English word **_s_****ҩ****_lr_** came to me).

"Two," I said curtly, and threw the wallet and fanny pack onto the ground in front of her. "Read the names out to me," I commanded.

She looked up at, her eyes wide, but then her head bowed, and her hair covered her face. She was looking down right at the items I had pulled from the corpses I left miles behind me in the forest, but she made no move otherwise.

"How many more do I have to kill before you do as I say?" I demanded.

She started, shaking in place, then reached for the bloodied wallet. She fumbled with it then pulled out a card with a photograph of the man's face and writing on it.

She looked at it and whispered: "Mark Duerstock."

She put the wallet back down onto the ground, and the card on top of it, then she unzipped the fanny-pack, poking through its contents until she located a card similar to the man's. She retrieved it and looked at it for a second before she said: "M-maryann Duerstock."

She put that card back into the fanny pack, and her head bowed again.

She was quiet and still.

I reached down and pulled her up to her feet by bunching the front of her shirt in my fist.

"Look at me," I demanded, because her eyes refused to meet mine.

She looked.

Abject was her face, and her chin was quivering.

I glared at her, hard.

Silent, bitter tears fell from her eyes.

I could so rub this in, that this was all her fault, that these were the first two of how many depended entirely on her obedience.

My words if spoken, however, would have been redundant. She got the point.

"I met a girl in the forest," I said coolly. "Sixteen years old. You'll never guess her name," I added.

My Bella looked at me, helplessly. "I ... I'm not good at guessing-games, Victoria," she said, cowed.

"Oh, go ahead," I said lightly, but then my tone darkened: "Guess."

It wasn't a request.

"I ..." Her tongue wet her lips. "I don't know," she said sadly. "I'm sorry."

"Her name was 'Bella,'" I said, smirking.

My Bella gasped. _"'Was'?"_

I _tsk_ed in annoyance. "Yes, 'was' 'is' ... what-fucking-ever, Bella, for God's sake. I'm just saying the coincidence, no? Like, is 'Bella' a common name now for some reason? And I said I'd find me another Bella if you didn't work out, and there she was, a spitting image, just like you, but a lot closer to Bella Swan's age, all by her lonesome, wandering the forest, just waiting for me to swoop in and ... _eheh."_ I chuckled evilly remembering little Bella Endleman and her badass Tae Kwon Do and all the good that did her.

"What did you do to her?" my Bella asked fearfully.

"Oh," I said causally, "I let her go ..." then my tone turned menacing. "For now."

I raised my eyebrows to my little captive, seeing if she got the hint.

She got it, all right! Her face drained of its colour, and her little heart went _pitter-patter_ in anxiety.

"Did you want me to bring her around so you can meet her?" I offered.

"No!" Bella shouted quickly.

I snorted. "Pity. You two would be such chums. Ah, well ..."

And I left my sentence, and my threat, hanging. My Bella didn't know this girl I met was now being rushed off to the hospital, off to the (relative) safety of civilization.

She didn't need to know.

Then I frowned looking at this girl, in some ways less mature, less sure of herself, than a girl ten years her junior.

This one was all caught up in her own bunched-up shirt.

This one was all _mine._

"You're a mess," I stated disapprovingly. "I'm a mess," I added.

"We're going for a swim now," I said, and I dragged my little play-toy off to the river. It'd be nice for us to bathe, ... my way.

I wondered, idly, how long she'd be able to hold her breath.

We'd soon find out.

Wouldn't we.

* * *

**A/N:** No, the Endlemens aren't LDS ('Latter Day Saints'). Polygamy has been prohibited by the Church of the LDS since the late 1800's. There is a spin-off sect (actually, there're more than one) called the AUB ('Apostolic United Brethren') that hold that polygamy is a good and necessary thing, that a man is supposed to marry and take care of multiple women. Members of this church all buy into this: the young adults had a march where they were promoting their way of life, and all that.

I don't know anything about Mormonism. I've met a few, a couple of gays (which is a sin in their religion, as it is in mine), some on mission work, and they really scared me, how they all hung together and looked at me like I was some ... strange alien species, because I wasn't LDS, but maybe that was me and my heebie-jeebies. But, then again, saying 'hello' gives me the heebie-jeebies, so there's that.

Victoria gives me the heebie-jeebies.

**oh, and ps**: Whatever you do, don't be texting your friendies when Victoria's talking to you. She doesn't like it. Okay? Okay! (Don't say 'okay,' either, she ... 'gently' reminds me. _Ouch-ouch-ouch!)_


	14. Not Alone

**Chapter summary:** Clothes. So much fuss made about bits and scraps that covered the body. So unnecessary, really. Air. So little fuss made about that, eh? But: so, so necessary, isn't it. For some.

* * *

"There!" I said, pleased and refreshed, or getting there.

I had dragged Bella to the river, dived in myself, told her to strip and join me, but then I had grown impatient with her slowness.

My Bella was slow. I didn't like that.

So I got out of the river, helped her undress, and pulled her into the river with me.

Now, she might see what happened differently, particularly the 'help her undress' part, but hey, did I rip off her clothes? No, I did not. I knew the value of clothes out in the wilderness for a human: it kept them safe and warm. I knew the value of clothes for me out of the wilderness: it got me close to them.

See? We both needed clothes, so I didn't rip them off her body. Waste not, want not.

Well, I didn't _tear _her clothes off her body, and I didn't rip off any of her limbs, so, technically, there was no ripping of clothes. No matter how forceful I seemed to be when I stripped her down.

Bella squealed in shock when her feet hit the water, and scrunched up into herself, shivering, when I dragged her further in, so the water covered her modest hips, so her clothes didn't have to.

She covered up her breasts as best as she could, and she was shivering violently.

"Refreshing, isn't it," I said happily, "getting clean again, right? And being unencumbered by clothes is so liberating, isn't it?"

Bella's lips were turning blue. "No," she muttered sullenly, hoping I didn't hear her.

Knowing I did.

My cheery mood evaporated in an instant. "What was that?" I said coldly.

The river-water temperature dropped a few degrees.

She glared at me, hard. "I said, 'no'!"

Ooh, goodness, the fight had come back to my Bella in spades. Perhaps it was the effect of the cold of the water on her.

I felt my body tightening. I controlled my breathing. "That wasn't the answer I wanted to hear," I said coolly, and a sweet smile was on my face, but my look said: _push it._

Push it, little Bella. I dare you.

Bella shivered. "Then why don't you just tell me what to say!"

I smiled at that, snickering. "Because, sweetie, one," I enumerated, "what's the fun of that? And, two, we both know what I want you to say, right?" I asked sweetly. Bella looked away, sullenly, so I pressed. "Right?"

She muttered a sullen, _"Yes,"_ but wouldn't look at me, shivering in her skin.

But she agreed with me, not because she wanted to, but because I wanted her to.

"There!" I said brightly, pleased. This one fought, then yielded, then fought, then yielded. Sometimes it was annoying, her fighting, knowing that she could do but yield, but sometimes it amused me, bending her will to mine, bit by bit.

"Now," I said, "let's get cleaned up, shall we?" and I glided through the water, my element, like it was air.

Bella saw me approach her. This caught her attention, and terror filled her eyes.

...

Bathing little Bella was fun, for I simply manipulated her body the way I wanted it to be. If I wanted her arm above her head so that I could wash her stinky little pit, then I simply grabbed her arm and pulled it above her head, and her resistance was naught to me. It was cute or pitiful. I couldn't determine which. Then I would scoop handfuls of water and splash it onto her body, sometimes slapping on a part I wanted particularly cleaned.

I liked my Bella particularly cleaned. Squeaky clean, and my! did she squeak!

Now that was cute: her squeaks.

By the time I was done with her, her skin was red with the friction, and blue with the cold, and tight, tight, tight all over where it tried to contract itself away from the cold.

"There!" I said, "all clean! How do you feel? Better?"

She looked at me, giving me a poor, waifish look. "I'm...I'm ... Victoria, I'm so coooolllldd-dd-d-dd!"

Her teeth were chattering.

I tittered. "Aw! You poor thing!" I exclaimed as I examined every little quivering piece of her flesh.

She looked good enough to eat!

"Ah!" I said, brightening. "I have just the thing for you!"

I think my exclamation, and what it forebode, scared my little Bella more than anything else.

"See," I continued, "you're half-in and half-out the water, and the water as it evaporates from your skin is chilling you, now, if you were fully submerged ..."

I grabbed her roughly and without warning flipped her back and pulled her down by her shoulder into the water.

"... then the water won't evaporate off you, see?" I said to her wide eyes, staring up at me in shock from under the water's surface.

"See?" I said to her.

She couldn't hear me, but she could certainly see the word formed by my mouth.

I pulled her out and stood her up.

"See?" I said. "Better?"

She sputtered water as she coughed explosively.

"Hm," I said. "I'm not sure you've got it."

So I slammed her into the water again, and kept her under.

I looked down at her.

"You're not thinking about the cold now, are you?" I asked. "Fascinating how non-essential concerns just evaporate when all you can think of is that next breath, isn't it?"

Her eyes were panicked, and she began to struggle, to flail about, trying to get above the surface, and she grabbed at my arms, trying to release herself from them.

Like that was happening.

"I have an idea, Bella," I said, and I pulled her up out of the water. She coughed and wheezed, trying to suck in some precious air. "Let's have a contest. The one who can hold her breath the longest wins. What do you say?"

"Wha?" she said, not even hearing what I said.

"Great!" I enthused.

And I leapt at her, a hawk spearing in to strike, fast enough so that she could do naught about it, slow enough so that she saw it happen.

She shrieked as I grabbed her, as I flew, lifting us both full out of the water, then we fell, plunging into the river at its deepest, the water a full foot above us as we sunk to the sandy bottom.

She fought, she struggled. She could see the surface above us, the light of it filtered down to us in the murky depths not far below, but she could not reach it, despite her flailing attempts.

The air escaped her lungs and bubbled up. I watched them as they floated away from her.

She just didn't get the game, did she? The goal was to last as long as you could, not to waste the precious air in fruitless struggle.

She strained with all her might, and then she screamed for all she was worth, drawing in water, coughing, screaming, drawing in more and more water into her lungs as she made one last, pointless attempt.

I waited this out. And I saw it in her eyes, the darkness rising up to claim her.

I turned her head away from the surface to face me.

"See?" I said, and giggled. The air bubbled away from my lips. "There is _nothing_ you can do to save yourself now, is there?"

She looked at me, utterly helpless. _'Please!'_ she mouthed, pleading.

"'Please' what?" I bubbled.

There was plenty of air in my lungs for me to answer her.

Not that I needed air, though: the living needed air to breath, and I was already dead. I have been dead for centuries.

She didn't say what it was she wanted, however, for the light and reason had gone from her eyes, and the struggle had left her limbs. She floated still, finally, in my arms.

And her heart beat fainter, and fainter, and fainter.

And then ... nothing.

...

The fire burned merrily.

You rub two sticks together hard enough, long enough, fast enough, and they will burst into flame.

I didn't need the fire.

She did.

She lay, still, on top of her clothes on the ground, so at peace, so innocent, so sweet in her vulnerability.

It took me mere seconds for me to ignite the fags and to fan the fire into a cheery little burn.

Then I returned to my Bella's side, and started pushing on her chest rhythmically, one-two, one-two. Then I pinched her nose closed and breathed a lungful of air into her body, and then returned to massaging her heart again, reminding it how to beat: one-two, one-two, then another puff of air into her lungs, then back to massaging her chest, then ...

_There it was, _I thought delightedly.

Bella coughed, and her little chest, heretofore still, pushed back against my hands strongly, picking up the beat in the rhythm that I had memorized in my short time with her.

The longest time I had ever spent with a human. Near a human. You get me.

She opened her eyes and looked about her, dazed, trying to get her bearings.

"Well, well, well," I said, smiling down at her. "Look who decided to come back to us." I smirked. "You had me worried there for a moment."

"Wh-where was I?" she asked, confused. She could barely turn her head, and her movements were weak.

"Hell," I said casually. "I brought you back."

I smirked, and added sarcastically: "You're welcome."

"Th-thank you," she said automatically, but then looked at me, totally lost.

I giggled.

_She was so cute!_

"Bella," I said and turned her head to look at me. "I'll take that kiss now."

She blinked rapidly, trying to process what I said. Nothing made sense to her, she was still reeling from rapid shifting of her reality.

She got more a sense of it as I lay down beside her and turned her to me, her naked back facing the warmth of the fire.

"Hmm?" I said and raised my eyebrows.

"Oh," she said, and she bit her lip, blushing furiously, heat on her face from more than the fire.

I smirked and put her head into my hands, and gently pulled her to me, pressing her lips to mine, and I kissed her.

She shuddered at first, trembling violently for a second, but then she took in a deep breath, and relaxed in my hands.

And she let me kiss her.

And I thought, as I kissed her, _holy... fucking... fuck._

I don't know if was because she were human, and her softness struck me like a blow, or if it were because she had fought me so hard up to now, and the pure surrender of her melting into me simply blasted through me like a tidal wave.

But whatever it was, this thing, this feeling ripped through me tearing me asunder, and I knew I have never, _ever_ felt something so powerful seize me to my very being, and I knew if I were to continue on for another thousand-million millennia, I would never, _ever_ feel this burn that consumed me as it consumed me now.

And she felt it, too.

Her lips were soft and shy, but her little heart was going _pitter-patter, pitter-patter_ so rapidly I feared it would burst in her tiny chest. I brought my hand down from her entangled hair and rested in on her pert breast, feeling her heart hammer against my hand. I tried to soothe it, I tried to calm her little rapidly-beating heart, so that it would last just one more moment before it burst.

Just one more moment that it could beat in her chest, so this kiss could go on, just one moment more.

Eventually, she had to come up for air.

Or put another way, my kiss was so God-damn good it made her forget to breathe!

I let her pull back, and she gasped for air, as her eyes darted around, looking at anything but me, and her face was beet red. Her heart in my hand beating rapidly, showing her fear. She was terrified, of what? My kiss?

Or what it did to her?

"Bella," I said, "now you kiss me."

She looked at me, quickly, scared, but then looked away, in fact, she turned away, looking up at the sky.

"No," she said.

I puzzled over this answer.

"What?" I said.

"Don't ... call me that," she said. She started hesitantly, but then her voice firmed up, and she finished her statement with conviction.

She turned back to look at me, and look at me she did.

She wasn't blushing now, either.

"What?" I repeated coolly.

I knew not from whence this new-found strength in her came, but I was not afraid of it.

I feared nothing. It was she that had everything to fear, everything to lose, for I could take it away from her in one of her little, tiny heartbeats.

But she was not afraid now either.

She said, "I'm not this person, Victoria. I'm not. And if you want to kiss her, you go kiss her, but if you want to kiss me, _kiss me, _and I'm not gonna let you ..."

I put my fingers to her lips, hushing her, and I looked at her intently through narrowed eyes, measuring her resolve.

I rolled onto my back, looking up at the sky above through the canopy of trees, knowing that the first to break away was the first to lose.

And I had just lost.

I blew out a long sigh.

"No one," I said, "has ever placed a demand on me and lived, you know." I informed her.

"I'm not nobody," she came right back.

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.

She was looking right back at me.

"You know," I said, "I can take what I want, and you can do naught to stop me."

"Yes," she said simply.

I glanced at her again. "So how do you think ..." I began.

"Cut this shit, Victoria," she snapped at me.

I turned on her in a flash, "What?" I snarled.

Her face went white, which pleased me greatly. She knew I could hurt her, in any way I wanted, and her body's involuntary start gave away the vulnerability beneath her bravado.

But then her chin firmed up, and she dipped deep down into that infinite well of strength she had been hiding from me, and from herself up to now.

"You're not fooling anybody, Miss-oh-my-God-scary Victoria," she retorted. "Yes, you can do anything you want. Yes!" she shouted now, "you can do anything you want to me, but ... but ..."

She looked away. "But ..." she swallowed hard, and her eyes teared up. "But you're doing it to me, not to her. Not to _her, okay?_ And I don' ... kn-know wha she did ta-ta ya, th-that ya havfta k-kill all thoz peepul, but-but ..."

I turned to her and put my hand over her trembling mouth.

Two tears escaped her eyes and hit the ground. She sniffled hard and swallowed.

I removed my hand.

Now it was my turn to bite my lip as I regarded this creature.

And I thought, selfishly, I could kill this one, right now, so fast, in fact, that she wouldn't even know she was dead. She would be lying there, her dead eyes staring at me as I held her heart in my hand, ripped from her chest and now stilled.

I could do this thing. Easily. Then start over. Or just go find Bella Swan and end her, lightning fast. End her, and end me.

I could do this thing.

I turned away from her bright, bright eyes and looked back up at the sky.

"If I were ..." I said.

I stopped myself.

I could do this thing. Right now. End her. End me. Her dead eyes, staring at me.

"If I were to ask you to kiss me," I said, and I glanced at her, then I looked right back up at the sky, "would you kiss me?"

It was quiet.

It was quiet for a time so long that I began to regret my question, and wonder why I had even asked it.

Asked it, why? Instead of doing this thing. This thing that I could do.

"You'll just have to ask me, and see, won't you?" she said.

I looked up at the sky for help.

_What do I do?_ I asked it.

It did not answer.

I blew out a long, long sigh, and covered my eyes with my hands. I tried to crush my eyes into my skull, but unlike this frail, little, human girl beside me, I had no weaknesses, not one, and my eyes stoutly refused to be crushed.

I turned to ... her.

And bit my lip.

"Will you ..." I said.

She looked back at me steadily.

"Will you kiss me ...?" I said.

Her eyes hardened, and her whole jaw was tight, her body burning with anger.

"Will you kiss me, Summer Fergusson?" I said finally.

Her lips trembled at that, and she took in a deep, shaky breath.

And now it was there. She had to say 'yes' or she had to say 'no.'

And I didn't know what she would say. Looking at her, it looked like she didn't know what she would say. I don't know if she thought it would come to this, that she could demand this of me, and that I would do this thing. This thing that I had never done before: acquiesce.

Today had been a day of never-befores for me.

I don't know if I particularly liked or if I very particularly hated this day.

The tongue. It came out of her shy little mouth and touched its tip to her lip and disappeared into her mouth as fast as it had showed itself.

Fuck me and her tongue.

Fuck me_ with_ her tongue, for fuck's sake; I wanted to mount this bitch and fuck her so hard right now. What, with her leaving me wanting her kiss so God-damn badly! The suspense was killing me!

And I was dead already.

I have no idea how other people handled this burning, this ache in the pit of their stomach.

She looked away, breaking the intensity of the moment, and I almost screamed with relief.

The one who looks away first, loses.

"Yes," she whispered. She looked back at me shyly. "Yes, I will kiss you, Victoria Sutherland."

I could not stand it anymore.

"Well, then, fucking kiss me, bitch!" I snarled.

Her eyes registered shock. "What the ..." was all she could get out before my lips crashed on to hers, and I did mount her, turning her onto her back, throwing her, more like, and I wrapped her in my arms, and pressed down onto her all that she could bear of me. The kiss I took from her was desperate and needy, and I mauled her lips, no. No. My whole fucking body mauled hers in my _need _for every part of me, every inch of my body to kiss her, every part of her, and everywhere.

I could not get enough of her, enough of this kiss. I rammed my tongue into her mouth, and I softly, gently sucked her taste into me as my tongue battled with hers and won.

God! I won her to me, her body to mine, taking every little bit of her resistance and turning it into weakness and wanting, making her want to kiss me back as much as I wanted to kiss her.

And I was scared that if I could push her into her clothes, into the dirt, I would push her so hard, so fiercely, that I would not just hurt her, but I would actually squeeze her fluids, her vitals right out through her eyes and mouth and nose and cunt and ass and even through the very pores of her skin.

And I was scared because I knew that I could do this to her, and I knew my want for her was so desperate that I was right on the very cusp of doing this thing that I so wanted to do, because I wanted her so badly, to kiss me back, as I kissed her.

And she did. She did kiss me back, after her initial shock of my attack and the surprise of me taking her so forcefully.

But there was nought else I could do. The _need_ impelled me so strongly that I was all that, and nothing else.

"Mmmth-" she panted. "Mmm! _Mmmm!"_

I had to physically force myself from kissing her, from pressing my body against hers.

And it fucking hurt, it fucking hurt me to my guts to stop myself. God, it hurt!

I pulled away from her lips, but my body was still firmly pressed to hers, and we were panting.

We were panting like two bitches in heat.

"What is it?" I asked, and I heard my voice come out strained, almost whining with want.

"N-nothing," she said, but her face registered obvious pain, so I eased my body off hers, but slightly, just slightly, not breaking contact.

I couldn't bear to do that.

"It's just that ..." she said and squirmed about a bit, "this ... _fuck! ..._" She scooted over a bit. "Ouch!" she complained. "There's this God-damn rock and ..."

Her face registered pain and irritation. "And ..."

I was laughing! I was howling with laughter now, and I rolled off her, and my laughter dissolved into a peal of giggles of relief. I thought that I hurt her somehow in my passion, and to find that it was a mere irritating pebble?

Oh, my Summer is a princess unable to sleep because of one little pea?

"Har-di-har-har!" Summer looked at me angrily. "But _you_ have a rock underneath you and get mauled by a sex-starved ..."

I put my hand to her sweet, sweet, fucking sweet and soft lips, silencing her, and merriment must of been dancing in my eyes, for her own eyes narrowed at mine.

"Shhh, Summer-love," I cooed, "allow me to take care of your little problems."

I was in motion, wrapping her in her clothes, moving her aside from the offending piece of earth, and then tilling the soil, a foot deep, so that the ground I rested her on was as soft as down.

You ever fuck on a freshly-plowed field? And you wonder why farmers have so many children?

Fertile soil. It helps. You know. Being fecund, and all.

I lay her down on the earth and lay myself beside her as quick as you can say 'Jack Sprat.'

"There!" I said.

"Whoa," she said, her eyes wide.

Okay. Maybe I was showing my eagerness. Maybe I was a bit open about my desire to get things moving along.

Maybe.

I stilled myself, feeling my body vibrate in protest.

It did not want to be stilled. But I stilled myself.

I put my hand on either side of her head and looked deeply into her eyes.

"Summer Fergusson," I said, my insides burning hot and hard, "will you kiss me again?"

I saw her considering look, so I added quickly, "... please?"

It wasn't begging. I don't beg.

I was merely being polite, you see.

Her lip twitch into a lopsided grin, and she knew.

She knew she had me. And I knew she knew. I was whipped, a slave now, and not by anything she did at all, but by what she had, what I wanted, so, so desperately.

And I so wanted not to show her this, my desperate need for her lips and the sweetness they contained. I didn't want her to see this in me.

But I so miserably failed at hiding it from her. So, so miserably, desperately ...

So ... me. Helpless. Hopeless, that's what I was.

And now I was still, not because I stilled myself in my desperate want, but because now I was empty inside, seeing me in her eyes for what I was.

Nothing.

But.

Then.

She brought her hands to my cheeks, and then, sliding them to the nape of my neck and the back of my head, she pulled herself to me, me, immovable in my infinite strength, she pulled against this that was me, and put her lips to mine, ...

And she kissed me.

And my abject despair melted away like Winter's snow beneath a hot Summer's Sun.

Heh. 'Summer's Sun.

Should I rename _myself_ to 'Winter,' then, and let her melt me, again and again?

I seriously considered this for a second as she kissed me, then, I let this thought go, and put my hand over her gently beating heart, so strong and steady, and I rolled myself on top of her, and I kissed her back.

_Fuck, _did I kiss her back: softly, sweetly, a strong, steady, lasting kiss, me to her, her to me.

Her heart. Her God-damn amazing heart was beating so sweetly under my fingers, and its song was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

I broke our kiss, and I saw the disappointment flash across her face as I did, and that made my own sing for joy.

Summer didn't want our kiss to end, either.

And that joy gave me boldness.

I looked down at her, my eyes burning intensely. "I _want_ you," I said softly to her beautiful brown eyes.

James' eyes were blue. I would never love blue eyes again.

Summer's eyes widened. "Um ..." and she blushed. "O-okay ...?"

I felt my eyebrows come together. I wanted her. Did she not understand this?

"Summer," I said intensely, "I _want you._ Do you understand this?" I said, and I tried to keep my voice even.

"I-..." she said, looking away, then she looked back at me. "It's just that ... I've never done ... this. You know." Then she amended quickly. "With-with a girl. That is."

Then she looked away. "You know." She added helpfully.

My gaze did not waver. "Nor have I," I admitted.

She looked back at me quickly. "You haven't?" she asked, surprised.

I shook my head gravely.

"But I thought ..." she said. "But ... Bella?" she dared to venture.

_No,_ my look said.

"But ..." she said, thoroughly confused now. "But ..."

"Summer," I said gently. "Do you want me?"

She bit her lip and looked away shyly.

And she nodded.

I kissed her shy temple, softly. "I want you," I said softly, but with every ounce of conviction in me that I could put into these words.

"What do we ..." she paused. "How do we ... do it?"

And she looked to me for guidance.

I swear by all the heavenly powers, I could have killed her, right here, right now, for the feelings her trusting eyes filled me with.

But her trust was not misplaced.

"I think," I lied, for I did not think: I _knew, _"that if you kiss me, and that if I kiss you, we will know what to do."

"Oh," she said.

_'Oh,_ _she said'_ I thought to myself, and her _'oh's_ fucking smote me. They were like a drug, for those of you who are not blood-drinkers, they were like blood, and one taste was not enough, for I needed more and more of them.

"Will you kiss me, Summer?" I asked.

She nodded once, and reached for me.

"Summer," I said, removing my hand from her breast and taking her hands in mine. "You have to tell me to stop, do you understand? You have to tell me when to stop, because I will not stop. Not ever. So you have to tell me to stop, yes?"

She looked up at me with her trusting brown eyes. "Yes," she said simply.

I released her hands, and smiled down at her sweetly, and swallowed, hard.

The venom threatened to pour out of my mouth in flood, I was so desperate to have her, and my body could not distinguish between me taking her as my love and me taking her to suck her dry.

My mind was rather fuzzy on this point, too, and so I girded myself with bands of resolve tighter than steel, and I lowered myself down to her, and I kissed her, and my hand found its way back to her sweet little heartbeat as she kissed me back, now with her own passion.

And I shifted, and she shift, and I shifted, and she shifted, and we fit ourselves into each other, my shifting leg opening her thighs, my cunny finding her bald, little slit, and then resting on it.

And as her lips kissed mine, my tongue wormed its way into her welcoming mouth and she sucked my tongue in as my hips began to move on hers.

She was so ready. Her bald little puss puffed up, kissing my hairy cunt, and she slicked up and rubbed herself against me as I pressed my body against hers, longing, sucking up the contact of her flesh against me as a dried sponge sucks up water.

I was so ready. Venom lubricated my cunt and dripped down upon her puss, and our fluids commingled, the saliva of her mouth with the venom pouring out of mine, and her wet and ready pussy rubbing against my cunny.

And I fucked her. I kissed her passionately as I pressed against her and rubbed against her, needing to feel her pressed against me.

Then I felt it. Her body began to tighten up, and as she pressed harder against me, her whole body began to tense up, making her head pull back and press itself harder into the ground beneath her.

But I wanted this, I wanted this _now._ I followed her movement, doubling it with mine, not faster: firmer, and I pressed my lips more firmly against hers as her head tried to pull away, deepening our kiss as I fucked her, good and hard.

Then she started squealing into my mouth, softly at first, then with the full force her little lunges could offer. _"Eeee!"_ she squealed into my mouth. _"Eeeep! Eeeeep! Eeeep!"_

My Summer was a little squealer, I noted wryly, but then I set that thought aside as I fucked her through her orgasm as she came for me, good and hard. Then I continued to fuck her, gently, as she came down from it, bringing her back down to Earth from the heavenly heights she had ascended.

Her face reddened and her breathing became ragged as she tried to catch her breath.

So, with regret, but with a heart overflowing with happiness and contentment, I broke our kiss, and eased myself off her.

I watched her recover. Her muscles in her arms and legs and chest and face relaxed then turned to jelly as she panted big gulps of air, refilling her lungs and replenishing her cells with much-needed oxygen.

"Fucking ..." she panted, "wow!"

Her eyes were shining, and tears fell, not because she was crying, but because she didn't have the strength to hold them back.

She blinked them away, looking up at the sky for a second. Then she looked over at me.

"You stopped!" she said, and I don't know if her tone was accusing or surprised, or both.

"Yes," I said mildly, smiling warmly at her. "Didn't you want me to?"

"Ummmmm..." she considered, then blushed, returning her gaze heavenward.

"I ..." she said hesitantly. "That was ... well, amazing."

"Yes," I said, smiling.

She looked back at me quickly, surprised. "Really?"

"Yes," I said with conviction.

But I couldn't keep the smiles from wreathing my face.

She looked at me cautiously.

Then that God-damn tongue came out and touched her lip. "But ..." she said, concerned.

"Summer," I said, "kiss me."

Then she blushed and bit her lip, so I gently grabbed that sweet, little head of hers and pulled her into me, and I kissed her.

I so fucking kissed my shy, hesitant, concerned, little bitch. And my kiss let her know _exactly_ how amazing this was, and let her know _exactly_ how amazing it would continue to be.

That is, if I had anything to say about it, and you can God-damn rest assured that I would be saying quite a bit about it.

I pulled back, looking deeply into her eyes, and she looked back, trustingly, into mine.

Then I chuckled.

"Wot?" she said defensively, which only tickled my funny-bone further, my laughter spilling over into giggles.

She smiled at me cautiously.

"It's only," I said, smirking, "that you were afraid that I would try to get into your pants."

Her eyebrows came together. "Well, yeah," she looked between us and added ruefully: "Obviously."

"Not so," I said, and I smirked again as I explained: "you're not wearing your pants."

"Whaaa?" she said, surprised, and I sniggered at her dumbfounded look.

So she she smacked me, hard, on my arm.

"Owww!" she whined.

I laughed at that, and took her hand, reddened from the sting, and I kissed it better.

She watched me with careful, guarded eyes.

I think she liked it. I think she didn't want me to know she liked it.

_Keeper._ I thought. Definitely a keeper.

No human had ever stood up to me.

Well, I mean, stood up to me, and lived, that is.

And although I had had more than my share of dick cumming in me, both James', of course, and more than mort of victims, I had never ... they had never ...

I looked at Summer and I saw what my look was, from the dawning realization in her eyes.

I lay back onto the ground and looked up at the September sky.

"Fuck," I muttered.

Summer was quiet.

Then she said softly. "Yeah..."

I felt her eyes on me.

Tentatively, she lay her stung hand on my chest.

I took her hand into mine, brought it to my lips and kissed it, and tasted her salty sweetness in the sweat of her palm as her hot-hot blood heated my lips kissing it.

I put her hand back over my dead chest, wherein no heart would ever beat again.

"So now you're sorry," she said.

"Nooo," I said quickly.

"No?" she asked, disbelieving.

"It's just that, ..." I paused, reflecting, looking up to the sky for strength that it refused to supply me. I said quietly. "This changes everything."

She made to pull her hand off my chest. Perhaps to give me space, perhaps? So that I could be alone?

I held her hand on my chest. I didn't let it go.

I knew what it was to be alone.

I let her hand go and turned, facing her.

I put my hand on her little, tiny breast, her heart beating a mile a minute.

And my loins longed for her, and her little, tiny chest, housing her o-so-delicately beating heart.

"Do you regret this?" I asked her, looking directly into her eyes, ready for her answer, whatever it would be.

"Nooo..." she sucked thoughtfully.

And then she looked away.

The first who looks away loses, but this time, it wasn't she that lost. It was I.

"No?" I dared to ask.

She looked back at me. "It's just that ..." Then she bit her lip.

I waited. "Couldn't you've just ..." she said. "Why did you have to kill all those people? Why didn't you just ask me? I mean ..."

"Ask you... what, Summer?" I said. Then I framed it for her. "'Excuse me, miss, you look just like the person I'm going to kill, so would you mind submitting yourself to my torture so ...'" Then I stopped. "So that this would happen? That I didn't even know that would have? And you would have said what? Yes? To this? 'Yes, I'll leave my boyfriend and ...'"

I looked at her. "And what?" I said helplessly. "Summer, I'm ..."

I looked away.

Summer's hand came to me and rested on my chest.

I looked at her, hurting, and looked away.

She snuggled into me. "Okay," she said, but somehow that word didn't annoy me. I marked it and let it pass. "So, maybe that wouldn't have worked out so well."

I chuckled humourlessly.

Bitterly.

"So," she said softly. "What're you going to do now?"

I looked back at her and smiled sadly. "I don't know."

"You gonna kill this girl?" she demanded.

I closed my eyes. "I don't know. She took away everything from me. I don't know what aught else to do."

I reopened my eyes and looked into hers.

She considered this. Then she pointed out: "You took away everything from me."

I looked at her. Her gaze was steady. "I did," I admitted.

Her lips firmed up, and that infinite well of strength inside her opened up again. "I won't let you kill her," she said.

I just looked at her. What could she do to stop me? Nothing.

But somehow, her saying it made it so.

I looked back at her, saying nothing. There was nothing for me to say.

There was just emptiness inside me. Loss.

I was lost.

"I won't let you kill anyone anymore, you hear me?" she demanded.

_Meaning what?_ I thought, _that she would be there to stop me?_

I dared not think this thought.

But how could she anyway?

I shook my head regretfully to her, her infinite strength, and her foolish, foolish little assertion.

"No," I said sadly. "I must kill. It is what I am."

Her eyes narrowed at me. "What are you?" she demanded harshly, her face obstinate.

I pressed her hand into my still chest. "I am Death," I said simply.

But I couldn't leave it to that, could I?

Could I!

"And where there is life, and _hope, AND GOODNESS, I COME AND I ..._" I was shouting right into her face.

And she was looking right back at me, scared out her mind, but bravely facing my rage with her courage.

Her weak, little courage.

I turned away from her scared, brave little face and looked up at the heavens.

"... and I take it away," I finished sadly.

Summer was quiet for a while.

Then she said firmly, "I don't believe that."

I smiled sadly at the sky. "You do not have to. It is what I am. I must kill others to continue."

She didn't accept this. "Bullshit! What, are you some kinda cannibal? No! That's just bul-..."

"I do not need their bodies to continue," I said. "It is their blood I consume."

Silence.

"Oh." she said.

"Oh." she said.

I breathed in the air, tasting her scent in it, tasting the taste of her mouth on the tip of my tongue, a bitter taste now, as I remembered with regret the sweetness of her kisses. And remembered how desperate I was to hear her 'oh's, and now, hearing them, how sad I was to hear them.

"Oh." she said again.

_"'Oh,'" _I mimicked sadly, and my echo was drained of all hope.

For I killed all hope, even my very own.

I killed everything. That's what I was.

Verily.

"But ..." she began.

I put my hand over her mouth, suddenly alert, every sense screaming inside me.

"Trouble," I said.

And then the sound came, softly at first, then loud enough for her to hear it.

_Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup._

The very air shook as one of the metal flying machines roared directly above us, passing by us and then, a moment later, coming to rest, hovering in the air, a couple of miles away.

Summer sat up, then stood, looking between me and the metal insect in the air.

"Is that where the campgrounds are?" she asked, and concern wreathed her face.

"Get dressed," I said curtly.

Summer blinked at me. "Now," I snarled.

She reached for her clothes as the flying metal machine turned and headed back, directly toward us.

...

We looked at the campsite from my vantage point.

Humans looked left, and humans looked right. They never looked up. Until it was too late, that was.

"Fuck," I cursed.

There were three official vehicles, painted forest green parked at the entry to the campsite and there were four park rangers, three men and one woman, working their way through the site, devices in their hands they were talking into, these with antennae, and voices were coming out of these things in their hands.

Apparently they had cell service, or whatever it was.

I could take them out now, easily.

"What are you going to do?" Summer asked, held into my side.

I looked at the park rangers.

What a fucking mess! The irreparable damage was done. Four humans, no problem, but the flying machine, their conversations ... more humans were coming, many more, and that meant media, and that meant exposure.

_"Fuuuuuuck!"_ I snarled softly, and every one of my senses was on fire, in all directions. They were coming already. I could feel it. Fuck. Fuck, and fucking fuck!

"Confirmed," one of them said. "Abandoned campfire two miles Sou-southwest of this location. Two persons sighted there two minutes ago. Can you get a fix on them now? Over."

_"ssskkr We're looking now. Over. ssckrt."_ the device responded.

"Roger, keep us apprised, CQ142 out," he replied.

The woman said. "I count thirteen bodies here, there was nobody in the female head."

The man nodded. "Will, check the men's."

A young man gulped and nodded.

"Victoria," Summer whispered. "What are you going to do?"

I looked carefully over the situation, assessing it.

I turned to Summer. "Hang on. Not a peep, okay?"

She nodded.

Not good enough. "Close your eyes." I said.

She looked at me.

"Summer," I said, "trust me. Please."

She nodded slowly, then closed her eyes.

We fell. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty feet to the ground.

_"Eeep!" _she squeaked softly as I held her into me as I landed, a feathertouch on the ground.

I set her onto the ground.

"Summer," I said.

She opened her eyes.

"What are you going to do?" I said.

"I don't ... understand," she said carefully.

"Summer," I said sadly. "It is not what I am going to do. It is what you are going to do now. You can stay here, and join your Alan, or ..."

I looked away.

Summer looked toward the campground, and the activity there.

She looked back at me. "Or?" she asked.

She knew what I meant by staying.

"Or," I said, and bit my lip.

I couldn't continue.

Summer's little hand came out to my cheek, holding it, then turning me, through the force of her will, to face her.

"Or?" she demanded.

I put my hand to her hand, holding it to my cheek for a second, then kissing it softly, and bringing it down.

Holding her hand still, not letting go.

"Come away with me, and be my love," I said.

"Oh." she said.

_Oh, she said, _I thought sadly seeing the surprise on her face.

She considered, and I died ever second she did, thinking about what I would have to do if she chose to stay.

"Are you gonna make me like you?" she asked cautiously.

"I ..." I brought up my hands, making two frustrated fists, "... can't."

She looked at me, the agony and helplessness on my face.

I've never tried to turn anyone. I've never been able to stop myself. I've never cared enough to want to. And I knew I couldn't now, after centuries, I wouldn't be able to stop myself.

"Oh," she said.

She looked back toward the campsite.

"Summer," I said desperately, my senses screaming at me to flee. "You have to choose _now!"_

To ignore this warning was death for me. I felt it to my very being.

She was unmoved, looking at the campsite.

"You said be your love," she said.

"Yes," I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

"You meant that?" she demanded, looking at me square.

"Summer," I pleaded, _"please!"_

"Okay," she said, seeing, but not understanding the terror in my voice, "but ... _whoop!"_

I scooped her up, and we were _flying_ through the forest, and I was screaming like a banshee as we flew, screaming with terror, and it made me run all the faster, and I ran faster than I have ever run before.

And I could run fucking fast, fucking faster than any other vampire in the world, even that fucking Edward Cullen.

How else to you think I have survived for so long?

Summer wasn't done with me, however. "But I am not gonna let you kill anybody ever again, swear to God!"

"Summer!" I _tsk_ed, "we'll talk about this later, okay?"

"You said 'okay,'" she accused.

"Fuck, yes!" I screamed. "I said 'okay,' okay? God!"

She looked at me as I ran. "You're really scared," she said.

"Yes!" was torn out of my throat.

"Why?" she asked simply.

"There are worse things than me," I shouted. "Much, much worse!"

But, even as I said this, my senses were settling from a panicked fire of electricity to a dull burning heat of warning.

No human could catch me, even if their flying machines could go faster in the air than what I could cover on the ground.

But.

If a human saw me, then there would be one more cue for the Volturi to sniff out and follow up on.

And exposure of this magnitude...

I ran. I ran fast and hard. We had to get out of this fucking country if possible, and before nightfall if we could.

I ran, and the colours of the forest blended together and the wind whistled as it whipped past us.

Us.

And I did not feel the wind, as I held my Summer to me, because now, even though I was on the run, running in terror, ...

I was not running alone.

And I did not know what this meant. I did not know what my future held anymore. Not revenge, I guess, but something else entirely.

Because now, I was not alone.

Summer looked up at me, putting her hand gently on my cheek, then she shivered, and she wrapped herself more tightly into me.

I brought her cheek to my lips and kissed it, gently, and my lips on her cheek were on fire with the heat of her aliveness.

"Thank you," I whispered down to her with my whole heart.

"You're welcome," she replied, blinking up at me, surprised at the depth of my gratitude.

Then she smirked, and her tongue came out and touched her upper lip, showing her embarrassment of the intimacy of this moment.

I looked down at her, as her little tongue disappeared, and I ran on.

And I thought: _That tongue._

We were going to have to stop soon, in the, oh, next few hours.

I needed to put that tongue to work.

Good work.

_fin._


	15. Epilogue — Together

**Epilogue**

She slept.

There was another girl, about her age, who slept on a chair beside her, but otherwise the room was empty of persons, and the whole landing of the hospital was quiet.

You say 'floor,' not 'landing,' don't you?

I looked down at her for a while, wondering if should wake her, or wondering if I should allow her to continue to sleep.

I should let her sleep, she looked so frail, so fragile, like the slightest thing would push her over the edge, and from the edge, she would fall, and never recover, never return from the abyss to the land of the living.

And, before, this wouldn't matter to me, neither the life of this girl on the hospital bed nor her companion reclined on the chair beside her ... nor the little life forming in the companion's womb. Not of it would have mattered before.

It didn't matter now. I wondered why I came here in the first place.

But I am Victoria Sutherland, murderer, liar, cheat, thief ... but I do have honour, even I, in my own twisted way.

And I had been curious. I didn't know if this little girl would make it, this Bella, whose family name was not Swan but Endleman, and from the looks of her, it was a close thing. There was a tube extended from a sac of liquid attached to her arm, and her whole right side was bulky with bandaging. And what was visible of her left was mere skin and bones, her face had a pasty-pale _offness_ to it that indicated how much she had to fight to stay alive.

It was the little fighters that raised my admiration.

And they were so much more fun to kill that those snivelling fools who just gave up, pissing themselves as they whimpered for their lives. I hated the latter so much I either killed them quickly to silence them, or slowly to prolong their agony, depending on how pissed I was.

The little fighters I killed, too; it's just that I had so much more _fun_ doing it.

And that, really, was what it was all about: the fun.

So, why was I here?

I turned to go.

"Why do you guys have to come by _every hour?"_

The girl seated had stirred and was looking at me with irritation.

I smiled gently at this girl, or, at least I tried to; it came out more as a smirk, and I said casually, "Just checking her vitals, miss; standard procedure."

I was please how easily I pulled off sounding professional, but, really, it's very easy to do.

One just has to sound confident in what one is doing.

And when that doesn't work, the confident bluff, well, I find killing everybody and trying somewhere else entirely works just as well.

"In the dark?" the girl asked, rubbing her eyes, trying to clear her head from the cobwebs of sleep.

"Well," I said, "I didn't want to disturb your sleep."

The girl considered this. "Well," she said, "that'sssss ... kind of you."

"It's quite all right, miss," I said, "go back to sleep."

"Mrs," she corrected.

"Ah," I said. "Well," and I made to go.

Too late.

Poor, little Bella sighed, then moaned and whimpered, shifting a little, and that slight movement bolted her right into wakefulness. "Ow!" she complained, then: "Ow, ow, ow!"

The girl rose from her chair quickly, cut on the light for the room, and went to Bella's side. "Bella, Bella," she called. "It's okay. I'm here, all right?"

Bella looked around in confusion, her eyes focusing in and resting on her companion.

"Clara!" she called. Her face was tight as she kept herself from showing her pain.

Wrong move: tightening yourself up only makes things worse. She should have yielded to her pain so that her body would relax.

Clara, her companion saw this. "Pain-killers have worn off, huh?" She turned to me. "Nurse," she commanded, "can you get her her next dose? I don't know what it is, so can you check and get it for her, please?"

"Of course," I said.

But the damage was done. Bella was now aware another was in the room, and her eyes found mine, and as I replied to Clara, Bella's eyes went wide with the shock of recognition.

She gasped quietly, but she recovered quickly, her eyes shifting between Clara and myself, assessing the situation.

"Nurse," she said tentatively, then she blushed, and continued quickly. "Uh, uh, I'm okay for now, I just twisted a little bit, but could I have some ice chips?"

"Ice chips," I repeated.

"Yes," she said. "My throat is dry, and I'm not allowed to drink water yet and ..."

Her tongue came out and wet her lips, which, I noted were very dry, cracked even.

"Of course," I said, turning to go.

"You will get them?" Bella asked plaintively.

"Yes," I said.

And at the same time, Clara scolded Bella. "Of course she will, Bella," she said, "it's her job!"

I left.

_Heh._ I have a 'job.'

This was a first.

...

I returned with a cup of ice-chips, and Bella's face lit up when she saw me.

Clara grabbed the cup right from my hand and turned right back to Bella, gently massaging Bella's lips with a chip.

"Thank you," she said dismissively.

I pursed my lips at this. _O, the irony!_ I thought, _to be serving someone who doesn't even know what's she's dealing with._

I could _make_ her know, and show Bella _exactly_ how I dealt with matters such as these.

I turned to go. I had gathered what I came for: Bella was alive, and being cared for by her family who loved her.

That's all I needed to know.

"Wait!" Bella called faintly. I turned back.

Bella's left hand was jerking slightly, either trying to wave Clara off or beckon to me.

She was really out of it.

"Wait!" she called desperately.

I waited.

She coloured under our combined scrutiny. "I, um ..." She paused, looked between us. "Uh, Clara, can you give me a few minutes? I have to ... you know ... pee."

Bella squirmed on her bed with embarrassment.

Clara snorted. "Oh, Bella, really! It's not like I haven't seen you pee, like, a thousand times here already. Nothing to be shy about!"

Clara turned to me. "'Sokay, I've got it."

Clara was a mite bit bossy, I'm thinking.

"I know," Bella said, "but ... I was really out of it then, I think, and now, I'm like, shy, 'kay, Clara? Can you give me just a few minutes, ... please?"

Bella used her big eyes.

Clara looked at Bella for a second, then blew out a sigh.

"Okay, whatever," she said, "I'll go get something from the vending machine. You want anything? A snickers?"

"Can't eat," Bella said.

"Oh, yeah, right," Clara said, then she looked between me and Bella and shrugged. "Well."

And she left.

I looked at Bella coolly. Bella looked at me, a touch of wonder in her eyes.

"So," I said.

Bella bit her lip and said, "So," shyly, just barely daring to smile.

...

"So," she said softly, "'Victoria.'"

"Yes," I said. "How did you come to know this?"

"Oh," she said, "it's not like your all over National News or anything!" And she tittered softly, but she was watching me carefully, scared.

"Ah," I said, but internally I thought: _fuck!_

"Blowing up a truckstop in California?" she asked.

"I had to cover our getaway," I explained.

"'Our,'" Bella stated.

"Yes." I said.

"That girl with you they showed on on the news," Bella said.

I nodded. She thought about it for a while.

"'Summer Fergusson,' huh?" she said.

"The news?" I asked resignedly.

"Yeah," she said, "they IDed her pretty quick."

I made no outward reaction, but inwardly, silently, I was grinding my teeth.

"She looks a lot like me," she said.

I shrugged off the similarity. "A bit," I averred.

Bella nodded. "From the footage, she seems really bossy."

I chuckled lightly. "I wouldn't put it that way. I don't think she would either. In fact, I think she would say I'm the bossy one, as I'm whimsical one, and there's naught to stop me to get my way."

"Except her," Bella put in.

I shrugged.

"They don't know if she's a hero," Bella mused, "what with her throwing herself in front of that person you were gonna kill, or they were wondering if she's an accomplice."

I remained silent.

Bella continued. _"I_ think she was brave, standing up to you. That's what _I_ think."

"And you would know," I said and smirked at her.

Bella simpered at this.

I chuckled. "You shy thing now!" I exclaimed, delighted.

Her look became serious now. "Not many people get to meet Death in person and live to talk about it."

"You have been talking," I confirmed.

"The police have not given me a moment's peace!" she whined. "Makes me glad for bossy nurses! I wake up, and there's three cops right there, swear to God!" She motioned with her chin where I stood.

I nodded.

"And it's not like I could tell them anything more than what my family told them a zillion times already!" she added, annoyed.

"Ah," I said, sympathetically. "The price of notoriety."

"I'll say!" she said. "Everybody wants to be, like, Britney Spears, but then, here I am, 'the lone survivor of the Fishlake massacre,' and I can't get a moment's peace! I just wish they'd leave me alone, but they don't!"

"Let me just say I share your sentiment," I said.

"Yeah," she complained. _"Tell _me about it."

I looked at her in confusion. "I just did."

Bella sighed, exasperated.

But I knew how she felt. I just wished they'd leave me alone. The civilian authorities, but they weren't the only ones hunting me now, and if it were just I, I could get by, but now I had my own precious cargo I had to ferry around and remember to feed.

So ... _disruptive _to everything I was, having a human in tow.

"Huh," Bella said thoughtfully. After all: she was not the only one on National news. "Speaking of which," she asked, "how'd you get past the cop? Wasn't there one guarding the door?"

"There was ..." I drawled.

Her eyes widened. "You didn't ..."

She couldn't continue.

I shrugged off her concern. "Smoke break."

"Oh," she said relieved.

The thing was ... I actually did.

And the nurse on duty tonight for this floor of the hospital wing?

Let's just say she wasn't at her station right now.

I don't leave behind messes, when I clear a path, I _clear _it, which means I leave a way out of any situation, _always, _and I make sure I'm not interrupted.

I've found dead people rarely interrupt me and what I'm about.

"So, you don't have much time until he gets back?" Bella asked, sad.

I smirked at her unnecessary concern, unbeknownst to her. "You forget," I said, and I looked down at my name tag, "I'm a nurse, see?"

"'Hildebrand,'" she read off the name.

"If that's what it says," I said.

Bella looked up at me sharply, searching my face, but then she said nothing.

But I saw her wonder at my statement. "Is that your last name?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, it's Sutherland."

Bella blinked in surprise. "And you told me, just like that? Aren't you ... scared that the cops will ask me, and I'll tell them?"

I smiled gently at her. "No, I don't care. You won't tell them."

"You're so sure," she said.

"Yes, I am," I said.

"You sure about everything?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, but then I looked away.

Our eyes locked, and I frowned. "Well," I amended, "I was until now."

"Because of Summer Fergusson," Bella said, looking at me intently.

"Yes, because of Summer," I said.

"You love her," she said.

"Really?" I answered, a touch annoyed, "and I thought I hid it so well!"

Bella looked away. "Sorry," she mumbled an apology.

"Me, too," I said, just as sadly.

Bella looked back at me at that.

I shrugged. "I took away everything from her. _Everything._ I am her Death, and she is my Persephone, do you understand me? And I can _never, ever _let her go. I ..."

I broke off and looked away. "If I were merciful, or prudent, I should have ended her the second I set my sights on her, just as I've done to everybody else, but I can't."

I looked back at Bella. "I can't continue without her now, and ..."

I looked down at my hand. It was clenched into a tight fist. I felt ready to punch it through a wall.

"You didn't ..." Bella said. "You didn't end me the second you saw me."

I frowned. "No, I didn't."

"But how many people you killed at that truck stop?" she asked.

"Only two," I said, "... not counting cops."

"Four cops," Bella informed me.

I knew this already.

I shrugged. "They were in my way, and they were shooting at us."

"Four cops," Bella repeated. "Right on national TV, too. You know they'll _never_ stop until they bring you to justice."

I snorted. "Not true. I've killed authorities before. You forget that after a couple of decades people lose interest and forget."

"I haven't lived a couple of decades," Bella pointed out softly.

"I know, little one," I said kindly.

Bella was quiet for a moment. "So, you killed those cops, then all those people at the park and ... not her and not me." Her brows came together. "Do you ..." she looked at me shyly. "Do you have feelings for me?" she asked carefully.

"Yes." I said.

Bella stared at me, wide-eye. "Um ... oh."

She didn't know where to look.

I smirked. "Bella," I said, and smiled at the name I so hated.

The name that freed me.

"You're beautiful," I said, and she blushed, hard. I continued: "smart, witty, and you have ... potential."

Bella looked at me sharply at that. "Great," she muttered angrily, and looked away.

"What's that?" I demanded.

Teenagers and their attitudes!

Bella blew out an angry sigh. _"Everybody_ is _always _telling me that, and it's like ..."

She shrugged angrily, then winced in pain. _"Oww!"_

"And it's like," I said for her, "they have expectations of you."

_"Yes!" _she bit off angrily.

I smiled. "Let me tell you something, little Bella," I said. _"I_ have expectations of you. I expect you to reconcile with your father. Have you?"

Bella bit her lip. "Kinda. I mean," she said quickly, "everybody's being nice to me, so ..."

"This means nothing," I said. "They are relieved you're alive now and recovering, but what happens when you've fully recovered. Things will go right back to the way they were."

"No," she said firmly.

"And why not?" I demanded.

"Because," she said, "after this, Dad and I are going to have a little chat."

"Where you're going to tell him how it is?" I asked archly.

"No...," she said quickly, then became thoughtful. "It's not that. It's just that ..."

She thought for a moment.

"It's just that I'm an adult now, and ..." she pursed her lips. "And if they want me to be an adult, then I have to, you know," she looked at me for support.

I was silent.

"Well," she said, "I have to act like an adult, and take responsibility for myself like an adult, and ... well, make decisions like an adult."

She was quiet for a moment, then she said: "That's what."

I regarded her. She looked back at me levelly.

"Hm," I said. "And how old are you?"

"Sixteen," she answered.

She didn't apologize for what she said. She didn't excuse her age. She just said it.

It was hard to hold back the smile on my face.

She beamed, pleased as punch, and her pleasure eventually forced me to crack my own smile in return.

This, too, pleased her no end, but she was quietly pleased. Proud, but not exulting.

I did have feelings for this little one. I liked her.

"And what are these adult decisions you're making?" I said, testing her, but curious, too.

So rare: to be talking with an adult.

She shrugged, then winced. _"Oww!" _she whimpered, then scolded herself, _tsk_ing: "Gotta stop doing that!"

She returned her attention to me: "Dunno. Not get married yet. Not to Craig, anyway. I wanna get well, you know? Finish high school. Then ... college? Maybe head off on my own? Maybe join an LDS mission?"

"LDS?" I said.

"'Latter Day Saints,'" she explained.

I didn't react.

"You know," she offered, "the Mormons?"

I tilted my head to the side.

Bella blinked. "Wow," she said. "I thought ..." she said.

"You thought...?" I prompted.

"Well," she shrugged very slightly, catching herself, but that actually worsened her pain, catching her shrug as she was doing it.

She grimaced. "I mean, you don't know about cell phones, but I thought everybody knew about the Mormons, you know, the LDS and us, the AUB."

"Well," I said, "I don't. There are many things I do not know, nor do I care about, like cell phones nor religions nor other distractions. I know what I need to know to be here, now, and what I don't know, I don't worry over. If these things were necessary, I would know them. What I have know has been sufficient for me for a very, very long time."

Bella was quiet at that.

"Victoria," she said shyly.

"Yes?" I said.

"Does God exist?" she asked, then blushed.

I smiled at her. "Sweetie," I said. "Are you asking what I believe, or are you asking what I know?"

"What you know," she asserted. Then she added: "I mean, you're Death, right? You said. So do you work for the Big Guy in the Sky, or ... what?"

She was being silly, but she was asking in all seriousness.

I smirked. "Does God exist, little Bella?" I turned it on her. "What do you believe?"

"Okay," she said, frowning in irritation. "That's no fair. I asked you first."

"Yes," I said, "it is not fair." I shrugged. "And if I believed in fairness your sense of injustice might move me." I smiled at her. "It does not. So, what do you believe, little Bella? What do you know?"

She thought about it. "I dunno," she said. "I mean, you said, you know what you know for now, and I don't know if God exists, and I'm still here now, so I guess it really doesn't matter, does it?"

I shook my head in disappointment. "The modern fallacy." I muttered.

Her eyebrows clouded in confusion. "You mean that was the wrong answer?"

"Yes," I said, "that is what I mean."

"But why?" she said. "I mean, isn't it a matter of choice whether you believe in God or not?"

I chuckled. "So, then, why ask your question if it's simply a 'matter of choice,' as you say?"

"Well," she said, sullen and embarrassed that she had been called out, "I mean, I thought you might know, so I asked, is all. If you don't, then you can just say. You don't have to get all bitchy about it!"

"Oh," I laughed, "but I do know."

"You do?" her interest was reignited.

"Yes," I said.

"But you're not going to tell me," she sulked.

"It is you who are going to tell me someday," I said.

Bella looked at me for a second. "What do you mean?"

I sat on the bed beside her, a friend, sitting by a friend and looked out her darkened window.

"Four, five centuries ago, we wouldn't be having this conversation," I told her. "Every action, every thought was directed to one end. We plowed the fields, served our liege, married, bore children, went to church, rested on Sunday, all Sunday, woke, and worked the next day, all day, every day. Lived, had children, died, all to one end." I looked down at her.

Bella was looked back up at me, rapt.

"And do you know what that end was?" I asked her.

She blushed. "Because there was God?"

I smiled at her. "And we worked, and we suffered, and we bore it, and we died, living our simple lives, accomplishing ... nothing. Planting fields, dying, hoping for better, and on that simple hope, Bella, we builded this world, with it cell phones, and motor cars, and food for all, and now that you have it, this Paradise that none of us could ever dream of possibly being, what are you doing with it? What are you doing _in_ it?"

Bella blanched, and looked away from my intense gaze.

"Well?" I demanded.

Bella bit her lip and whispered. "Nothing."

"Yes," I spat, "precisely. I lived in hardship, fear and hunger, and died under the lash, and I look about me and ..."

I turned away from her, looking out the window for a long, long time.

"You asked if I have feelings for you, sweetie," I said finally. "And I answered 'yes.' Yes, I do," I explained. "I hate you. I hate every last one of you, passing through your lives, entitled, _complaining_ about what you have, oblivious, ungrateful, and that's why God doesn't exist for you anymore, you ungrateful wretch, because you have everything given to you and have earned nothing to be grateful for, so you can't thank God for another day or food on the table, or the life of a child, as you now despise all these things. Why be thankful? Why even have God who gave you all these things on the backs of _generations_ of people who lived, loved, suffered, hoped and died? It all means nothing to you. No point, so why bother, about anything? Why go on?"

"Wow!" Bella whispered, awed.

So, okay, perhaps I had gotten a bit intense.

Perhaps.

But I couldn't stop.

"And I can have none of these things: food, hope, life, ... a child. None of these things I and everyone I knew worked so hard to never see and died for hoping only that someday they would come to be. And they did. And now you have it all, little Bella; you, and every ungrateful person living on the face of the Earth today. And I don't. And I see you and ..."

I paused, recollecting myself to myself.

"The only thing," I said, my voice low, "that gives me joy now is to kill, and to kill, and to kill, and to rub in your faces exactly what you losing: everything, but then, not everything, not even anything, because if you don't care, you don't lose anything."

I looked at Bella. "I give you exactly what you deserve: nothing. And I _love_ doing that. _Every... single... time_ that I do."

I turned on her, full on, "So, Bella Endleman, is there a God?"

And I put my hand to her throat.

Bella looked at me with wide, wide terrified eyes.

"Oh, my God!" a young woman's voice broke our reverie.

Both Bella and I turned and looked.

Clara.

_Tink-tink-tink._

A can of soda had fallen to the floor, bouncing at her feet and was emptying liquid beside her.

She stood there, shocked, staring. "You're... you're that ..."

That was all she said, for I was on her in less than a heartbeat, and, grabbing her by her throat, I threw her, forcefully, onto the bed beside Bella.

There wasn't really room, and the force of her hitting the bed and Bella shook her hard, and she cried out in agony of her broken bones shifting in her body.

My hand was firmly pressed on Clara's throat.

"Bella, quiet," I ordered. She whimpered. "You," my eyes with laser-focus shifted back to Clara: "One peep out of you, and you and the child within your womb dies, do you understand me?"

Clara gasped. "'The child within my womb'?" she repeated dumbly.

I smirked.

"Bella," I said, not looking away from Clara, "your first adult decision. Do you stay with your family, or do I take you away from it all, all your problems, and you come away with me?"

Bella didn't really consider. "They're my family."

"And?" I demanded.

"And nothing," she said. "They're my family, and I love them, and they love me. I'll make it work."

I looked down at Clara. "And this one?"

Clara looked up at me, eyes wide.

"She's my family, Victoria," Bella said softly.

"You couldn't stand to be around her two days ago," I pointed out.

"Victoria!" she said, strongly. "I'm not the peachiest personality, either, and she's put up with me, and has taken care of me the last two days. If anyone was the brat who you should be glaring at like that, it should be me, not her, for God's sake!"

I did glare down at Clara for another moment, pure hate in my eyes.

And then I let her go and stood, leaving her lying on the bed.

I looked at Bella for a moment, frowning.

I looked back at Clara and looked out the window, muttering angrily: "Once again, I don't kill somebody, and I'm going to be paying for this. Another mess. God damn it!"

I turned back to them. "Listen to me, the both of you! Someday I'm going to come back, and if this one here," I indicated Bella, "hasn't done something that does her and you," I glared at Clara, "and your whole fucking family proud, then ..."

I clenched my hands into fists. "I will eviscerate every last one of you, one-by-one."

I glared hard at Bella. "You hear me?" I snarled.

Bella _tsk_ed: "Good pep talk," she answered dryly.

"Bella!" Clara squeaked, terrified.

I turned on Clara. "Quiet, you!" I snarled.

She went white.

Bella didn't.

"She has a name, Victoria," she chided, protective of her family.

My eyes narrowed to slits at Bella, but she was uncowed.

My face didn't show it, but I was proud of her.

I turned back to Clara. "Cell phone?" I demanded. "I assume you have one."

With trembling hands, she reached into her pocket and handed it to me.

I crushed it in my hand, letting the pieces of it fall onto the floor by Clara's chair.

Bella turned and whispered into Clara's ear: "It's okay, she just hates cell phones, is all."

I glared.

Bella turned to me. "You do know that they're gonna know you were here, now, don't you?"

I snorted. "Like I care!"

"But what about that girl ..." Bella said.

I smirked. "She has a name," I reminded her.

"Summer," Bella said and looked away.

I chuckled at that.

Clara looked between me and Bella fearful and uncomprehending.

Bella pressed forward. "Is she here, too? Or did you leave her in California? Or ...?"

I remained silent.

"So you do care," Bella pointed out.

I smiled, then looked back out the window.

I felt like smashing through it: my glorious getaway.

Instead I whispered to it, very quietly: "Very much."

I turned back on them. Clara started, pushing herself back slightly from the 'unstoppable terror of the West.'

"I bid you good-bye, Bella, ..." I paused, and added: "Clara."

I frowned, distaste strong in my mouth. I didn't like naming them. I didn't like thinking of them as anything other than food.

"For now," I added menacingly.

"'Bye, Victoria," Bella called sweetly, totally spoiling the tone I had wanted to set. "See you later."

I glared at her.

"Maybe next time you'll bring your _girl frieeend!" _she teased, and giggled lightly.

I snarled low, but this only made Bella smile all the wider.

Clara didn't know what to do with herself, so, with some difficulty, Bella snuck her hand under Clara's neck, hugging Clara to herself. "'Sokay," Bella whispered conspiratorially to her, "I'll protect you from the scary monster."

I drew myself up to my full height, glaring down at Bella. "You had better!" I warned, utterly serious.

Bella stuck her tongue out at me.

I _tsk_ed, stamping my foot, and swept out.

Clara whispered as I left. "You mean, ... they're like ... that?"

Bella laughed.

But I was gone.

As the door closed behind me, I heard little Bella whisper to Clara, thinking that I could not hear her anymore, "Uh, sorry about this, Clara, but can you help me? I actually really do have to pee."

...

I shucked the nurse's uniform and dumped it on top of a bound, gagged form of a woman on the floor in her undergarments.

"Thanks for the uniform," I remarked as an aside.

It wasn't really a starched, white nurse's uniform, it was blue pajamas with teddy bears on them. And I'm like ... _seriously? _Has the world truly come to this?

The bound form at my feet quivered with fear.

That's right: I didn't actually kill the nurse on duty after all. I must be getting soft in my old age. This was a worrisome trend: me _not_ murdering people. I don't know if I particularly liked this. It was sloppy, and I could not afford to be sloppy now, nor ever.

"Have a nice day," I said to Nurse Hildebrand, not unkindly.

She just stared at me, terrified, of what I might do.

What I did was that I ran, naked, and _smashed _through the emergency exit door and jumped, one, two, three landings down to the ground floor, slipping easily between the gap in the stairwells.

The hospital wasn't on high alert ... yet, but it would be soon enough.

But by then I would be miles and miles and miles away, not headed to California, not anywhere in the state of Utah, neither were safe place for me nor Summer, not these next few decades, anyway.

And that's all we needed: Summer and I, the next few decades, alone.

Together.


End file.
